BSkyB punches Virgin Media in ads watchdog fist fight

Can't tell their ASA from their elbow

> we considered that consumers would understand ...

What they really meant is that customers understand that ALL advertisements for broadband are universally false, misleading and that none of the claims can stand up to any level of scrutiny. Customers also understand that as a watchdog, the ASA does just that: watches. It doesn't act.

Not surprising

Their current "No buffering" ad they are running suffered from buffering for me.

Keeps happening when streaming, even though I've run a cable to see if it was just the wifi buffering. Thank god I have Sky at my proper residence to use their unlimited broadband.

VirginMedia are extreme hypocrites.

As SMabille said, VirginMedia are happy to tout their heavily shaped, content managed (i.e. Torrents are throttled) as unlimited, and go to the ASA to get the right to put that on their posters, but Sky, with no shaping or management are limited?

VM have lost their fastest crown to BT, their unlimited crown to Sky, and have no superlatives left to describe their service.

Hopefully this will spur them into giving equally good service to their customers.

And I almost managed that last sentence without snorting derisively. Almost.

VM's service,is, in my opinion, very reliable, stable, and reasonable value for money. However, I think that the only area where they are winners is in the war of the weasel words in adverts.

PAH!

Virgin media shouldn't be allowed to advertise anything as unlimited, as it's limited to where they bothered to run cables the last time any investment was made in infrastructure... Some time last century IIRC!

As much as I hate murdoch, BskyB was right. If someone say unlimited I don't expect to download infinity MB a day. I expect to mean the company is not going to impose limits on me if I choose to spend all day watching vidoes.

"BSkyB successfully argued to the ASA that it was the only ISP that offered unlimited usage without any provider-imposed limitations"

I think BE might disagree.

not sure what your on

Virgin is the fastest and most consistant internet to say it slows down to 1.5mb shows either your lieing or there is something wrong with your line and you need to call them. Mine slowed to 8mb once and they sent a guy out to test the line. almost everyone i know on sky gets about 2mb best and pay 3times what i do for my 60mb line that stays at 60mb (well 58ish but still faster than the best sky can do) Yeah its a silly argument BUT to slate virgins BB is just laughable bt costs a fortune and sky is rubbish.

Virgin are seriously taking the mickey

For months our 30Mb broadband has been running at less than 1Mb. After endless weeks trying to get some sense out of tech support and 4 engineer visits, they have finally told us the area is basically saturated but won't be sorted out until November.

The customer forums on the Virgin Media website are full of stories like the one above - they common thread is that Virgin's claimed speeds are complete fantasy, their service sucks, and many customers would love the opportunity to ask Beardy Weirdy Branson why his company is so spectacularly incapable of organising itself to provide the services it advertises.

copper wire

"These restrictions were not applicable to all providers because some services, like those offered by Virgin [Media], were not delivered over a copper wire."

Really? What are they making coax out of these days?

Also their sums seem to be wrong

The 10Mb M Virgin service used flat out gives you 14.5 hours at full speed and 9.5 hours at 2.5Mb/s over a 24 hour period. I make that 74GB in 24 hours even the 10Mb L service only gets you an extra half an hour at full speed which takes the total to 76GB.

The Sky service at 7.5Mb/s average as described by Virgin would give you 79GB in 24 hours.

Also since very few people use their Internet at full whack 24 hours a day preferring instead to use it either in the evenings or afternoons I think that a fully working Sky broadband connection is going to be far better than a fully working Virgin connection.

I have a ADSL connection with Virgin Media which they market as "unlimited"

Is this not what Virgin's complaint about BT was ?

On a side note. I have been paying 27.99 per month for the last 8 months, even though I have a Virgin phone line. It appears it should be 15.99 per month.

But what can you do? Just suck it up :-(

Well....I'm no fan of the bigger ISP's but in an effort to apease the good lady earlier this year I agreed to drop my BE BB, BT phone line and sky package and opted for the bundled VM cable TV/BB and phone (the argument being that it was slightly cheaper than the previous setup and we got three months "free" and therefore made a saving of circa £180 for the year).

Can't argue with the wifes logic, and it was an argument I was going to lose if I tried to stick to it.

And I have to say - 5 months in - not a quibble, compaint, issue or nark. BB service has been flawless (apart from when I somewhat naughtily get caught hammering the newsgroups during peak times, and even then I only get throttled for a couple of hours to 50% speed, which is to say 1.8MB rather than the manly 3.7MB I usually enjoy), tivo is fecking awesome, and I never use the phone.

I DO hate the router, but not enough to replace it. I've not had to call customer service once, and I even managed to get them to ditch the installation fee to get me on board. 6 months free access to spotify premium thrown in, and they're doubling me BB to 60Mb/s next month, and also giving me a free tivo box for the bedroom after I asked them for an upgrade to their new bundle.

All in all - job done :)