BT has been reprimanded by the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for its TV commercial which made speed claims about its fibre optic broadband service, BT Infinity, based on out-of-date data.

In an advert that featured a student uploading his photograph to a dating site while his flatmate purchased concert tickets instantaneously, BT claimed that its service was ‘eight times faster’ by way of a voiceover and on-screen text.

The company’s website also stated that BT Infinity 2 offers speeds “up to 8x faster than the UK average”, based on Infinity Option 2 average customer speed and UK average from an Ofcom report dated Feb 2012.

However, the claims were misleading because they were not based on the most up-to-date Ofcom report. Other complaints challenged whether the speed of the photo transfer and upload and the ticket buying process in the TV ad was misleading and exaggerated the performance of BT Infinity.

BT said the claims in the ad were based on the most up-to-date report available at the time the ad was cleared, adding that the latest Ofcom results were subsequently published in March 2013 and the claim was still true according to that report.

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Categories: Ads, Advertising, Broadband, Policy, Regulation