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Thursday 10 July 2008

Oh dear. How long will this be allowed to continue?

Virgin's new ad - The Mother of all Broadband is surely misleading customers?

Um, have I missed something? Isn't the old NTL network co-ax not fibre optic? I know the Telewest network that VM acquired was substantially FO but surely VM can't say that their network is FO? Or is there an 'up to' deception again? As in ' up to x% of our network is fibre optic'.

And 20Mbps is hardly 'the mother of all broadband'. What slick marketing device are they going to use when they finally get round to offering 100Mbps? Or 1Gbps? (which of course we know FO is perfectly capable of, even today).

And spot the No download limits, but an acceptable usage policy applies. So, there are download limits then. So, really it should say 'Limited downloads' because they are being limited.

The ISPs are not helping encourage users to start demanding FTTH and true broadband services if they perpetually mislead them into believing that what is on offer now is all bells and whistles, nor by this constant abuse of the English language. Nor do these type of adverts help the politicos, potential investors, and so on, understand what is going on.

C'mon Ofcom, at the very least insist on the correct use of language, and some honesty in these ads.

Remember your statutory duties:

Ofcom's Statutory Duties
Under the Communications Act 2003:

" 3(1) It shall be the principal duty of Ofcom, in carrying out their functions;
(a) to further the interests of citizens in relation to communications matters; and
(b) to further the interests of consumers in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition"

Spot the important terms - citizens and consumers.





1 comment:

Clayton said...

BT took this issue to court and the court sided with Virgin. I agree it's misleading but since the network is delivered using fibre in part it apparently can be decribed as a "fibre optic network" - go figure.