Twenty complaints were received about a Virgin radio ad, a print
ad and an outdoor poster ad, including some from competitors Sky
and Carphone Warehouse-owned Talk Talk.
There were 10 alleged breaches of the ASA's Code governing what
is acceptable in adverts, and Virgin was cleared on all 10
counts.
Talk Talk complained that a press ad labelled ADSL suppliers
liars, that it was denigratory. Sky said that the adverts
misleadingly claimed that broadband speeds would never be affected
in Virgin services.
The controversial advertising campaign was titled 'Truth, Lies
and Broadband' and was designed to highlight the advantages of
Virgin's cable broadband network, which was built by NTL, over the
telephone-based ADSL networks of its competitors.
It is widely accepted that phone-based network capabilities
deteriorate with distance from a telephone exchange but that their
coverage is near total, whereas less ubiquitous cable networks do
not deteriorate with distance but are susceptible to deterioration
through network overcrowding.
A major point of the advertising campaign was that Virgin's
systems used its fibre-optic cable network rather than the twisted
copper pairs of telephone lines, and that this gave it superior
performance.
The majority of the objections made to the adverts were to
Virgin's claims that its network "doesn't use copper wire".
Complaints focused on the co-axial cable used by Virgin between
people's homes and the main body of the network. Parts of that
cable are made from copper, they said.
The ASA found that while copper was a component of those cables,
the wires did not suffer the same technical limits as telephone
cables, which was the thrust of Virgin's argument.
"We acknowledged that Virgin's co-axial cables were made of
either aluminium or steel and had a copper coating," said the ASA
judgment. "However, we understood the copper element of the
co-axial cable had a different structure, and served a different
function, to the twisted pairs of copper wires used in a standard
ADSL connection."
"We considered that most consumers would understand the term
'copper wire', in the context of these ads, to refer to the copper
wires of an ADSL connection … we concluded that the claims 'doesn't
use copper wire' in the radio ad, and 'delivered via a fibre optic
cable' in the press ad, were unlikely to mislead."
Sky and Talk Talk complained that Virgin's advertising implied
that their ADSL services covered just half of the country when in
fact it covered 98% of homes. The ASA ruled that this was a
misreading of the advert.
The advert had said that cable broadband was available to 50% of
the country, and that the other half could get ADSL broadband.
"TalkTalk and Sky objected that the claim...implied that both
Sky and TalkTalk had a UK ADSL coverage of around 50%, when they
believed about 98% of the country could get an ADSL broadband
connection," said the ASA's summary of the complaints.
"We considered that the emphasis of the ad was that Virgin's
cable broadband service was currently available to half of the
country, and that those not covered by cable broadband would be
able to get an ADSL connection instead," it said.
Sky said that the advert's claims that network speed was not
affected by distance from the phone exchange was misleading because
it implied that speed was never affected on the network.
The ASA disagreed, saying that it understood that overcrowding
could affect cable networks but that distance did not, and that
Virgin was simply comparing the two kinds of networks in a way that
made its look better.
"Because we considered that Virgin cable broadband was being
compared with that specific aspect of an ADSL connection, and
because Virgin cable broadband was not susceptible to the same kind
of speed depreciation as an ADSL connection, we concluded that on
this point the ad was unlikely to mislead," it said.
All 10 points made by the complaints were dismissed by the ASA
and the adverts cleared.
