Confusion as ASA Ban Gigaclear's Absolute FTTP Broadband Speed Claims - ISPreview UK
Sometimes rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority can seem a little overzealous and their latest decision to stop rural fibre optic broadband ISP Gigaclear from advertising absolute Internet speeds (e.g. 1000Mbps without the notorious up to prefix) on their website might just stray into that territory. Hyperoptic, B4RN and Gigler take note.
The ASA noted how a promotional claim on Gigaclears website promised that each customer connection to the Gigaclear network runs at 1000Mbps (1Gbps) for uploads and 1000Mbps (1Gbps) for downloads regardless of time of day, weather or distance from the cabinet, which was similarly adjusted to reflect subscribers on their slower speed packages (e.g. 50Mbps, 100Mbps etc.).
But a complainant challenged the wording and broadly suggested that the ad misleadingly implied that customers would always receive the stated speed capacity for the service they had purchased, because they believed the speed customers would receive was dependent on additional factors.
Gigaclear responded by providing data from their customers usage and line speeds. On top of that they claimed to have a significant backhaul capacity in proportion to their relatively low number of customers. The ISP then made clear that their Permitted Information Rate (PIR) was set at 10% higher than the advertised speed capacity (most ISPs go in the opposite direction for PIR), thus somebody on their 50Mbps package might actually receive 55Mbps.
The ASA banned the promotion and told Gigaclear to ensure that their ads were not likely to mislead consumers in future, which is a decision that could potentially impact other Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) style providers like Hyperoptic, B4RN, Gigler and so forth, where absolute speed claims are often used. In fact a lot of non-fibre ISPs still promote speeds in absolutes and weve seen plenty of smaller ISPs do this for ADSL, Satellite, Wireless and FTTC connections, which are much more likely to deliver variable performance.
But the ruling does raise important questions about network performance. The reality of networking technology is that connection performance is almost never perfectly reflective of a headline speed. Even true fibre optic ISPs sometimes still need to manage their traffic but Gigaclear doesnt appear to be at that stage. Similarly speed testers can be inaccurate and youre far more likely to find a bottle neck with remote Internet services or client-side hardware than at your ISP on a true fibre optic provider, especially one like Gigaclear that has surplus capacity.
On top of that its unclear what the ASA would deem sufficient evidence to be from a small ISP, which will only ever be able to produce an equally small sample size. In this instance we dont know how small that sample actually was but wed like to think that the ASA also considered proportionality in their ruling.
Quote:
Sometimes rulings by the Advertising Standards Authority can seem a little overzealous and their latest decision to stop rural fibre optic broadband ISP Gigaclear from advertising absolute Internet speeds (e.g. 1000Mbps without the notorious up to prefix) on their website might just stray into that territory. Hyperoptic, B4RN and Gigler take note.
The ASA noted how a promotional claim on Gigaclears website promised that each customer connection to the Gigaclear network runs at 1000Mbps (1Gbps) for uploads and 1000Mbps (1Gbps) for downloads regardless of time of day, weather or distance from the cabinet, which was similarly adjusted to reflect subscribers on their slower speed packages (e.g. 50Mbps, 100Mbps etc.).
But a complainant challenged the wording and broadly suggested that the ad misleadingly implied that customers would always receive the stated speed capacity for the service they had purchased, because they believed the speed customers would receive was dependent on additional factors.
Gigaclear responded by providing data from their customers usage and line speeds. On top of that they claimed to have a significant backhaul capacity in proportion to their relatively low number of customers. The ISP then made clear that their Permitted Information Rate (PIR) was set at 10% higher than the advertised speed capacity (most ISPs go in the opposite direction for PIR), thus somebody on their 50Mbps package might actually receive 55Mbps.
Quote:
ASA Ruling (Ref: A13-241560)
The ad included details of the stability of Gigaclears network; noting that the network ran at 1000 Mbps for uploads and downloads regardless of time of day, weather or distance from the cabinet. The ad also made no reference to the speed of the service being up to. In that context, we considered consumers would understand the ad to mean that customers would always receive the stated speed capacity for the service they purchased.
Whilst we acknowledged that the majority of the line-speed data demonstrated that the advertisers customers received the stated speed capacity, we were concerned that a number of instances, in the relatively small data sample, showed that Gigaclears customers did not achieve the stated speed capacity. Because we considered the speed claims were absolute in nature and because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support those claims, we concluded that the ad breached the Code.
The ad included details of the stability of Gigaclears network; noting that the network ran at 1000 Mbps for uploads and downloads regardless of time of day, weather or distance from the cabinet. The ad also made no reference to the speed of the service being up to. In that context, we considered consumers would understand the ad to mean that customers would always receive the stated speed capacity for the service they purchased.
Whilst we acknowledged that the majority of the line-speed data demonstrated that the advertisers customers received the stated speed capacity, we were concerned that a number of instances, in the relatively small data sample, showed that Gigaclears customers did not achieve the stated speed capacity. Because we considered the speed claims were absolute in nature and because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support those claims, we concluded that the ad breached the Code.
But the ruling does raise important questions about network performance. The reality of networking technology is that connection performance is almost never perfectly reflective of a headline speed. Even true fibre optic ISPs sometimes still need to manage their traffic but Gigaclear doesnt appear to be at that stage. Similarly speed testers can be inaccurate and youre far more likely to find a bottle neck with remote Internet services or client-side hardware than at your ISP on a true fibre optic provider, especially one like Gigaclear that has surplus capacity.
On top of that its unclear what the ASA would deem sufficient evidence to be from a small ISP, which will only ever be able to produce an equally small sample size. In this instance we dont know how small that sample actually was but wed like to think that the ASA also considered proportionality in their ruling.