Sky warned over broadband speed claims – had better not do it again or else
Virgin Media and two members of the public complained to the Advertising Standards Authority over a Sky Broadband advert which boasted its service is faster than Virgin’s.
Being a Virgin Media broadband user myself I can attest that it almost certainly is, as is a letter taped to the back of a tortoise, but that’s not the point.
Sky’s advert used data from speed tests carried out over at speed-monitoring news site Think Broadband, claiming that “over 350,000 people” tested their connections and found that Sky’s was faster than Virgin’s.
The ASA upheld the complaint, saying that the surveys – carried out between October 2006 and January 2007 – were too old to be used in an advert appearing in July 2007, adding that the test results didn’t take into account the fact that users would be on different packages with different speeds.
Not much came of it, though – Sky was just warned by the ASA not to repeat the ad. The full adjudication can be found here.
(Via ASA)
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