UK Advertising Body Standards Needs Some Broadband Expertise

IanFogg | February 06, 2008, 02:20 PM

update 7.12pm - This is even worse. Now VirginMedia are claiming "The UK's fastest broadband is fibre optic and it's only available from Virgin Media." !!!!! and: "Virgin Media is the only place to get fibre optic broadband, and the good news is more that half the homes in the UK can get it." !!!!!!

Reality: Half the UK's home are reached by HFC (see below), no homes are reached solely by fibre outside of a very small scale trial. Note to ASA - JupiterResearch has very reasonable consultancy rates.

[original post is below]

I'm astonished that VirginMedia has escaped sanction by the ASA this time. (read my original blog entry on the advertising here: Truth, Lies and Broadband, which includes a photo of one of the misleading adverts).

Virgin's Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network -- the standard cable network tech used worldwide -- is not fibre, despite Virgin's advert's strong implication, and regardless of the ASA ruling. The 'coax' part of the name means that the data traffic of their customers passes over a shared capacity coax cable along the street on the way from a home to a street cabinet which greatly reduces performance at busy periods, unlike DSL (where the last mile connection from a home to the telephone is not shared with anyone else and so is actually superior in that regard to HFC).

Plus, as everyone in the UK ISP industry knows, VirginMedia has had a tight usage policy and has had explicit traffic limitations during peak evening periods (latest)whereby consumers that exceed a given usage limit see their speeds reduced by VirginMedia's equipment (plus several outages, and more).

If consumers are (mis)led by adverts now, and believe Virgin that Virgin's network is really "super duper fast fibre-optic broadband" then there is no way that those consumers will understand the difference when a UK ISP finally launches a real fibre network (as is happening elsewhere in Europe now).

The ASA is just increasing opacity in the market, making it harder for consumers to understand what packages deliver good or bad broadband, and so whether the price represents value for money. This opacity benefits no ISPs in the medium term: The result will be that consumers will continue to be price sensitive, they will continue to opt for the cheapest broadband deal available, resulting in lower broadband revenues and profits for all UK ISPs, including, ironically, VirginMedia.

And, as a result, UK consumers will have to wait even longer for true fibre as low broadband revenue per user will make the business case for fibre investments much more difficult.