The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigated an advert
for Virgin's cable broadband services that promoted the ability of
customers to download television shows quickly. The press advert
was headed 'Hate to wait?'.
The ad claimed that users of its slowest internet package, M,
could download a television show in 26 minutes, and L customers
could do so in 13 minutes.
Competitor British Telecom complained about the ads, though,
saying that any M or L user trying to download a TV show in peak
time would have their connection deliberately slowed under Virgin's
'traffic management' programme, and that the programmes would
therefore take longer to download.
Virgin has introduced a policy of reducing the broadband speeds
of customers downloading large amounts of data during peak time. It
said that the download limits were imposed between 4pm and 9pm and
were to cap the activity of heavy downloaders.
Virgin conceded that at its own estimated size of a half hour TV
programme of 341MB a customer on the M package downloading at peak
time would go over that limit and have their speed limited. It said
that L and XL customers had higher limits.
The ASA said that the ad was intended to highlight the speed of
TV downloads and should have contained some reference to the fact
that the speeds quoted were only achievable at certain times .
"We considered that the ad clearly stated that an M package
customer could 'download a TV show', but that the ad did not make
clear that the 26 minute download time was only possible during
off-peak hours, or that by downloading one full TV show in peak
hours customers would automatically be in breach of the download
limits for the M package," said its ruling.
"We also considered that, although L package customers were able
to download two TV shows in the time stated in the ad before
reaching their download limit in peak hours, Virgin's traffic
management policy was similarly restrictive for L package
customers," it said.
"We considered that the text 'Acceptable usage policy applies'
did not make the peak time restrictions clear and it would not be
unreasonable for readers to expect to be able to download at least
one half-hour TV show on the M package, or several half-hour TV
shows on the L package, during the five hours of the peak time
period without breaching Virgin's traffic management system and
having their speed capped. Because that was not the case we
concluded that the ad was misleading," said the ASA.
Virgin has used the fact that it has its own dedicated cable
network as a major plank of its advertising. Competitors such as BT
have to use telephone lines to reach houses with their service.
Virgin was ordered by the ASA to make sure that future adverts
made it clear that download times would be restricted during peak
hours.
