We will end misleading broadband adverts, thunders ASA...

Re: ASA has recommended that future broadband advertisements should...

In theory all the ASA doing is warning advertisers that they are committing fraud and could be prosecuted.

You may have been misled about their remit by the ASA advertising.

Re: I'm offering free internet!

I pay more than £50 a month down my local pub for beer and that's unrelated to the net. Can I have my free internet?

Re: It's not just the adverts

"Ofcom's complicit"

What do you expect?

The staff come from the industry and move back to the industry. They're not about to go shitting in the nest.

ALL of this stuff is trading standards material. Why Ofcom is "regulating" misleading adverts is a far bigger question as is why none of the media (including El Reg) is raising such questions in public.

Re: It's not just the adverts

"Ofcom's complicit in that its "approved" comparison sites, eg. broadbandchoices, also do their best to hide line rental costs, and don't show or allow comparison of prices after the initial discount."

I can imagine it's a bit of a minefield though. If you are on cable you don't need a landline so there's no line rental in that respect for the BB cost. If you want ADSL or similar which comes over a phone line and you don't have or want a landline phone already then it's an extra cost required to install and maintain the service. If you already have a landline then cost is something you already pay for the landline phone service.

So, whether the line rental should or should not be included might be a good or bad thing depending on the specific customer needs. AFAIK, it's still the vast majority of homes in the UK which have a working landline for voice calls, so maybe extracting the line rental from the BB cost is the correct answer with a separate price listed for those who don't already have a landline but given equal prominence in the ads.

Or... educate people as to what 'up to' means.

I wonder whether you drive and if so whether you insist that your car always travels at it's maximum rated speed? Your tyres are probably rated for a higher speed than the drivetrain will deliver, so did you insist on a proportional discount on them as you can never use them to full speed capacity??

How about a more honest 'average speed'? How about banning the money grabbing 'activation fee'? I've argued away that nonsense before. Just threaten to cancel just before you accept the service. Ask them what is involved in activation and why flipping a switch is worth £x. There is no explanation except that it easy to get money from somebody if they are in the act of spending it.

Re: "up to"

I have no problem with that being in large text of the advert, but when I wish to purchase there really is no excuse to not do as Zen have been doing for several years now and run the BT wholesale speed checker and give a speed guarantee based on it's findings. But then I suspect this is one of those areas where you get what you pay for and hence "up to" covers those circumstances where everyone on your shared line are downloading TV and hence you get significantly less.

Whilst a guaranteed minimum would be nice, suspect it might be 56kbps on a 38Mbps connection...

What would be helpful is better metrics on actual service received in your area, which will naturally vary and hence a single average/typical speed figure would also be of little real use - other being just another factor for comparison sites to work with.

People have been taught not to think for themselves as everything is managed by the state. Now that people can't think, other people who do think are taking advantage of them. And rather than teach people to think for themselves, the ASA wants to dumb down people even more. #ScrapTheASA

The problem isn't that people cannot add up but that it's not easy to figure out exactly what one needs to add up. It's the not making things easy which the ASA are trying to rectify.

Re: ASA - Lap dogs

"ASA seem to work very hard not to see problems at the very least until the damage has been done."

See my first comment. Once you realise the ASA is paid for by the people producing the misleading adverts, perhaps their reluctance to do anything makes more sense.

It's only in the last few years that they've been asked to earn their keep. Prior to 2003 they had to deal with a few hundred complaints per year - that's now thousands per month and climbing. Their first reaction to the increasing volume was to try and ban anyone who submitted "too many" complaints or pointed out that they were sharing performance stats with others - a response which almost got them rendered superfluous as it got pointed out by several people in Whitehall that this was a refusal to self-regulate. Following that they simply started accepting and burying complaints until it was clear this course of action wasn't going to work either.

They've always done the absolute minimum necessary to stave off government regulators stepping in and they'll always be like that unless their feet are firmly held to the fire.

Re: ASA - Lap dogs

Totally agree with you. There is a current complaint about BT having the most powerful wifi router,

ASA still sitting kicking the can on this one, meanwhile the adverts are still being pumped out.

Totally wrong.

The ASA can't even ban an advert. All it can do is ask that the advert is not shown again - usually after the campaign has finished and the advert not likely to be shown anyway.

Stopping you right there, take a look at the Parlimentary watchdog, the guys who ensure MP's don't sidestep into cushy jobs.

Those are the most useless bastards.

The ASA is merely a bit crap by comparison.

Re: Misleading broadband adverts

"You might as well use the speed limit of a city-centre street as a guide.."

The providers know what the average speed of their subscribers is. Just add up the real world speeds of their customers and divide it by the number of customers, that is the average. It is based on facts not fiction. If the customer gets a higher speed then smiles all around. It will be closer to the truth than an 'upto' figure. If they fall too far from the average then the customer can look for a better ISP

Re: Are you reading this Virgin Media....????

Getting in touch with Virgin Media is pretty easy; 150 on you VM supplied land line.

Re: The ASA have lost the plot...

"Everyone should be able to order ANY combination of line rental, phone calls, broadband and / or TV from ANY mix of companies, with absolutely no bundling or tie ins."

Unless and until Openreach is forcibly divested from BT, this will never happen.

Look to New Zealand to see what happens when the the Lines company is fully separated from the Dialtone provider (the answer is, "the handbrakes come off").

Re: The ASA have lost the plot...

Gerry 3 "It's like buying a Ford and then finding that you can only insure it with Ford, you can only fill up at Shell and you can only go shopping at Sainbury's."

That sounds very like something called third line forcing. It's illegal in Oz. Wonder what the law is in the Mother Country?

(For clarity, the word "line" doesn't refer to phone line in this context. I think it really means something like "line of business". The classic situation was buy the Ford car, have to insure with Ford Insurance Ltd.)

Re: FTTH here in Atlantic Canada

Nah! BT asked for a huge sum of money to provide FTTH, there was a sharp intake of breath by the politicians, who then negotiated and decided they could just about afford FTTC.