ASA Adjudication on British Sky Broadcasting Ltd

Ad

A press ad, for Sky Broadband, was headlined "Reduce your costs not your speed". A secondary headline stated "If you're in a Sky network area, we don't slow your broadband speed down at peak times - unlike Virgin Media and BT. We could save you money too". The ad detailed the cost and speed of the broadband package and the small-print at the bottom of the ad included the text "compared to (1) BT Option 3 (up to 8MB download speed, unlimited usage limit £24.46 subject to BT's Traffic Management Policy" and "(2) Virgin Media size XL Broadband up to 20 Mb download speed and unlimited usage limit (subject to Traffic Management Policy)" and "Sky Broadband: If you are outside our network area you can get Sky Broadband Connect (up to 8MB download speed and 40GB usage limit which is subject to a Traffic Management Policy".

Issue

British Telecommunications plc (BT) and a member of the public objected that the claim "If you're in a Sky network area, we don't slow your broadband speed down at peak times - unlike Virgin Media and BT" was misleading because it implied that all BT customers would get slower speeds imposed on them during peak periods, when this element of their 'fair use policy' only applied to 'very heavy users'.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

1. British Sky Broadcasting Ltd (Sky) disputed the ad was misleading and said that all of BT's customers were potentially affected by its 'fair use policy'.  They said that unlike their competitors BT and Virgin, who reduced broadband speeds at peak times for users who exceeded their 'fair use' or 'traffic management' policies, the Sky Broadband Max product (now called Sky Broadband Unlimited) offered a truly unlimited service and did not slow down broadband speeds at any time.

They said BT's 'fair use policy' had the potential to affect any of its broadband customers and that it did not provide any clarification on what it considered to be a 'heavy user'.  They said that BT applied speed restrictions on peer-to-peer traffic at peak times and that this would affect popular services like SKYPE and Sky Player and other sites used for downloading music and video content. They said the intention of the ad was to draw out the distinctions between the usage restrictions imposed by BT and Virgin's broadband services as compared to Sky's network services which did not impact customers in this way and believed consumers would understand the main claim in the ad in this context.

Assessment

1. Upheld

The ASA noted both BT and Virgin had 'fair use' and 'traffic management' policies  on all of their broadband packages which resulted in slower broadband speeds for customers who used popular applications with very large bandwidths during peak hours.  We also noted in Sky network areas, Sky customers who opted for the Sky Broadband Max package could get unlimited broadband, regardless of the bandwidth of the applications being used.

We considered that consumers would infer from the claim, "If you're in a Sky network area, we don't slow your broadband speed down at peak times - unlike Virgin Media and BT" that BT and Virgin slowed down broadband speeds in peak times for all their customers, including those who used web-browsing services with low bandwidths.  We concluded that the claim was likely to mislead.

On this point the ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) 7.1, 7.2 (Truthfulness) and 18.1 (Comparisons with identified competitors and/or their products).

Action

The ad should not appear again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)