ASA to investigate advertised broadband speeds
The UK's Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has announced that it will investigate advertised broadband speeds and whether consumers are being misled. Previous guidelines stated that advertisers needed to be able to demonstrate that any headline speed in an advert has to be attainable for 10% of customers. Any changes to the rules governing advertising standards will come at a time when the sector focus is firmly shifting to ultrafast connections.

ASA to undertake research into broadband speeds in advertising

The ASA is set to rock the UK broadband boat again, as it has announced it is to undertake research into whether consumers are being misled on broadband speeds. Previous guidance resulted in the 10% threshold i.e. any headline speed in an advert had to be attainable to ten per cent of customers and for advertisers to be able to demonstrate this, additionally speed claims should be preceded by 'up to' and ADSL2+ services to warn about distance being a factor.

"As an evidence-based regulator, we want to make sure our approach is underpinned by the experience of real people. While complaints to the ASA about broadband speed claims have reduced considerably over recent years, we’re taking action to respond to the concerns by testing our approach through consumer research." ASA Chief Executive Guy Parker

The previous changes apparently reduced speed complaints by 60%, but after years of lobbying by some consumer bodies and recently Ed Vaizey MP calling for adverts to feature the speed that 75% of people can attain the ASA has decided to undertake research to try and learn how much of an issue speeds are and thus determine whether the existing guidelines need to change.

We have been tracking broadband speeds for many years now via our speed test and this allows us to provide a lot of insight into what people are actually experiencing. The following two tables are the April 2016 results and following on from the February 2016 data we published in March.

Large Provider Fibre Based Connection Download Speed Tests April 2016 Provider 10th Percentile Lower Quartile

(this is the 75% figure Ed Vaizey MP suggests is used) Median Download Upper Quartile 90th Percentile FTTC Overall (excludes Virgin Media) 12.3 Mbps 19.9 Mbps 29 Mbps 37.1 Mbps 49.1 Mbps BT 13.4 Mbps 21.7 Mbps 31.5 Mbps 37.7 Mbps 54.2 Mbps EE 11.6 Mbps 18.7 Mbps 27.7 Mbps 35.3 Mbps 37.6 Mbps Plusnet 11.6 Mbps 20.1 Mbps 31.2 Mbps 38 Mbps 57.4 Mbps Sky 10.5 Mbps 17.3 Mbps 25.4 Mbps 30.7 Mbps 37.3 Mbps TalkTalk 13.2 Mbps 20.1 Mbps 27.4 Mbps 35.9 Mbps 40.8 Mbps Virgin Media 8.3 Mbps 21.6 Mbps 40.6 Mbps 61.8 Mbps 100.5 Mbps Vodafone 15.1 Mbps 20.9 Mbps 31.7 Mbps 41.1 Mbps 57.2 Mbps

The top 10% figures will not line up precisely with current ASA figures, because these range figures are combinations of the up to 76 Mbps and up to 38 Mbps products and similarly for the Virgin Media products. The launch of the BT Infinity up to 52 Mbps is also going to confuse things as people are migrated to the service over a period of time. Asking people which product tier they are on is something we have tried in the past, but the quality of the responses is often mixed and would need further interaction with people to determine what their actual product is e.g. some people will be on a legacy service no longer advertised.

ADSL/ADSL2+ Connection Speed Tests April 2016 Provider 10th Percentile Lower Quartile

(this is the 75% figure Ed Vaizey MP suggests is used) Median Download Upper Quartile 90th Percentile All Providers 1.1 Mbps 2.5 Mbps 5.3 Mbps 9.9 Mbps 14.8 Mbps BT 0.9 Mbps 2 Mbps 4.8 Mbps 9.2 Mbps 15.1 Mbps EE 1 Mbps 2.3 Mbps 5.1 Mbps 8.6 Mbps 14 Mbps Plusnet 1 Mbps 2.3 Mbps 5.3 Mbps 9.5 Mbps 14.6 Mbps Sky 1.2 Mbps 2.5 Mbps 5.3 Mbps 10 Mbps 14.7 Mbps TalkTalk 1.3 Mbps 2.8 Mbps 5.4 Mbps 9.4 Mbps 14.4 Mbps Rural ADSL 0.7 Mbps 1.7 Mbps 3.8 Mbps 6.7 Mbps 11.1 Mbps

Any changes to the advertising rules will be happening at a very important change in direction for the UK broadband scene, since the focus is shifting significantly to ultrafast connections and even where this is a pure fibre (FTTH/FTTP) connection there is usually no guarantee that the speeds presented to the consumer router will be hit all the time, simply because the Internet is a shared medium and it is this sharing of bandwidth at multiple points between a consumers connection and the website/service they are accessing that makes it impossible to stop broadband speed complaints totally.

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