Virgin Media in trouble over broadband speeds
July 2, 2008
BT has made a complaint to the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) about the speeds of Virgin Media’s broadband service.
BT has made the complaint over Virgin Media’s “Hate to Wait” advertisement campaign which ran in the national media. The campaign showed download times for songs and TV shows.
The argument is that because of Virgin’s usage caps peak time downloads would be slower than advertised.
The ASA agreed with BT and have ordered Virgin to make it clear that speed would vary.
The ASA judged that the advert did not make it clear that customers who were on Virgin Media’s slower speed packages would only be able to download TV shows at the advertised speeds during off peak times.
They have said that Virgin Media need to clarify that download times would be restricted during peak time hours.
Virgin Media have argued against the ruling saying that users of its M 2Mbps (megabytes per second) package, downloading a TV show during peak hours would only take a few minutes longer to download.
Virgin also admitted that users would be subject to its “traffic management system”, which caps data usage during peak hours. They said that the issue BT raised would only affect users on the 2Mbps service.
Virgin has said that customers on its XL 20 Mbps package could download 614 songs or nine TV shows before their speeds would be capped and those on its L4Mbps package could download 60 songs and/or two TV shows before being subjected to caps.
In a statement Virgin Media said “We believe our Hate to Wait campaign provided a simple and transparent comparison between broadband speeds for consumers looking to choose between Virgin Media’s M, L and XL broadband packages.”
In another issue, Virgin Media changed the word “megabits”, in referral to the size of files being downloaded, to the correct word “megabytes”.
Virgin Media also agreed to change the advert to show that it would take some customers longer to download a TV show that was on the original advert.
See www.virginmedia.com for more information on their packages.
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