ASA Adjudication on British Telecommunications plc
British Telecommunications plc
81 Newgate Street
London
EC1A 7AJ
Date:
21 September 2011
Media:
National press, Internet (on own site)
Sector:
Computers and telecommunications
Number of complaints:
1
Complaint Ref:
A11-155704
Ad
Two press ads and claims on British Telecom's (BT) website:
a. The first press ad showed a group of men on a football pitch admiring solid beams of light that were landing on the ground around them. Headline text on the right of the ad stated "BT Infinity has arrived". Smaller text below stated "BT is rolling out superfast fibre optic broadband up and down the country. Customers in enabled areas are already being contacted for an upgrade". Text next to the BT logo stated "Infinity. Only from BT". Small print at the bottom-left of the ad stated "Limited coverage. Check bt.com/infinity for availability".
b. The second press ad showed a solid beam of light landing on the roof of the extension of a house at night. Inside, the beam illuminated a man who was shown using a games console, a desktop computer and a laptop simultaneously in three separate areas. Similar beams of light were shown travelling through the night sky in the background.
Text in a blue box, under the headline "BT Infinity. Do more online, all at the same time" stated "Whether it's streaming HD films, playing games or just having a chat, our superfast fibre optic broadband lets you and your family do it all online, all at the same time. In fact, most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds. Join now at BT.com/infinity or call 0800 XXX XXX". Small print below the box stated "Based on 85% of BT Broadband customers upgrading. Download speeds; speeds affected by distance from the cabinet, time of day and internal home wiring. Limited coverage. check bt.com/infinity".
c. The web page was headlined "BT Infinity - it's our fastest ever broadband”; smaller text stated “Most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds”. Text under the headline “Check if you can get BT Infinity” stated “If you can't get BT Infinity just yet, order up to 20Mb broadband instead and we'll upgrade you to Infinity if and when it becomes available at no extra cost (if you choose 40GB or unlimited usage broadband)”.
Issue
Virgin Media Ltd (Virgin) challenged whether:
1. ads (a) and (b) and, in particular, the claim “BT Infinity has arrived” in ad (a), and the claim “Join now ...” in ad (b) misleadingly implied that access to the service was widely available, whereas they understood that it was only available to a limited number of UK homes;
2. the claim “... most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds” in ad (b) misleadingly implied that the majority of BT’s customers already had BT Infinity, whereas they understood that was not the case; and
3. the claim “If you can't get BT Infinity just yet, order up to 20Mb broadband instead and we'll upgrade you to Infinity if and when it becomes available at no extra cost” in ad (c) misleadingly implied that the 20 Mb service was a fibre optic product, whereas they understood that was not the case.
Response
1. British Telecommunications plc (BT) said the claim “BT Infinity has arrived” in ad (a) was true and provided, on a confidential basis, the figure for the number of UK households currently able to receive the service. They said they were enabling more exchanges every month and had made a commitment to Ofcom to make fibre-based services available to 40% of UK households by summer 2012 and 66% by 2015.
BT said the headline was immediately qualified by the statement “BT is rolling out superfast fibre optic broadband up and down the country” and “Customers in enabled areas are being contacted for an upgrade”. They pointed out that the small print also stated that there was “limited coverage” and that customers should “Check bt.com/infinity for availability”. They argued that the ad therefore made clear that, rather than being available everywhere, Infinity was in the process of being introduced. BT said ad (a) also made clear that customers who could get the service would, in all likelihood, have already been contacted about it. They did not believe that any reader of the ad would find it misleading regarding the availability of the service.
BT said they had used the claim “Join now” in ad (b) in error and that in future they would ensure that they made clear in the body copy that not all customers would be able to get the service. They pointed out, however, that the ad did contain the statements “limited coverage” and “Check bt.com/infinity for availability” and believed customers were therefore unlikely to be misled regarding the availability of the service.
2. BT said it was not their intention to suggest that most BT customers’ broadband speeds had increased by three times. They said the ad referred only to BT Infinity and its benefits, and made no reference to any other BT broadband service. In that context they believed that the vast majority of readers would understand the claim “most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds” to be a reference to Infinity customers rather than BT customers in general. They said their interpretation of the claim was reinforced by the legal copy, which made clear that the claim related to BT customers who have upgraded to Infinity.
3. BT said ad (c) contained a factual statement: “If you can't get BT Infinity just yet, order up to 20Mb broadband instead and we'll upgrade you to Infinity if and when it becomes available at no extra cost” and strongly believed that there was no direct or implied claim that their 20 Mb service was fibre optic. BT said, moreover, the stated claim made clear that 20 Mb broadband was available instead of Infinity and that getting Infinity at a later date would require an upgrade to their existing service. They said that made clear that the 20 Mb service was being presented as an alternative type of service to Infinity and not an equivalent technology. They said, elsewhere on the page, it was explained that Infinity was their “new fibre optic broadband service”, which distinguished it from the types of broadband technology they had sold in the past.
Assessment
1. Upheld (in relation to ad (b) only).
The ASA noted Virgin’s concern that the claim “BT Infinity has arrived” in ad (a) gave the misleading impression that the service was widely available across the UK. We noted, however, that further text stated “BT is rolling out superfast fibre optic broadband up and down the country” and also referred to customers in “enabled areas”. We considered that those statements suitably qualified the headline claim and made clear to readers that, while Infinity was available to some customers, BT were still in the process of making it available to their wider customer base. We therefore considered that readers would not be misled by ad (a).
We also noted Virgin’s concerns in relation to ad (b), which we noted expounded the benefits of the Infinity service but, unlike ad (a) did not indicate that the service had limited availability. Although we noted that small print stated “Limited coverage, check bt.com/infinity” we considered that the restricted availability of the service was a significant condition likely to affect readers’ understanding of the advertised product and should have been made clear in the body of the ad. In the absence of that, we considered that the statements “most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds” and “Join now ...” would be interpreted by readers to mean that the service was already available to most, if not all, customers.
Because ad (b) implied that the Infinity service was widely available, and because we understood that that was not the case, we concluded that ad (b) was misleading.
On this point we investigated ad (a) under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising) and 3.9 (Qualification) but did not find it in breach.
On this point ad (b) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising) and 3.9 (Qualification).
2. Upheld
We noted that BT believed that the claim “most of our customers are already seeing at least three times faster speeds” would be interpreted by readers as a reference to customers who had already upgraded to Infinity receiving faster speeds. We noted their argument that the legal copy stated “Based on 85% of BT Broadband customers upgrading” but we noted this had not been linked to the claim. We therefore considered that readers were more likely to infer from the claim that the majority of BT’s overall customer base had the Infinity service and were experiencing three times greater speeds as a result. Because we understood that was not the case, we concluded that ad (b) was misleading.
On this point ad (b) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising) and 3.9 (Qualification).
3. Not upheld
The ASA noted that Virgin were concerned that readers of ad (c) might assume that the 20 Mb broadband product to which it referred was a fibre optic product. We noted however that text in the paragraphs above the claim explained that BT Infinity was their “new fibre optic broadband” and that the claim at issue itself stated “If you can't get BT Infinity just yet, order up to 20Mb broadband instead and we'll upgrade you to Infinity if and when it becomes available” which we considered made clear to readers that the 20 Mb service referred to was not a fibre optic product.
Because we considered that the ad made clear that the 20 Mb product was not a fibre optic service, we concluded that the ad was not misleading.
On this point we investigated ad (c) under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.9 (Qualification) and 3.11 (Exaggeration) but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action required in relation to ads (a) and (c).
Ad (b) must not appear again in its current form.
