Virgin Media 'fastest wi-fi' advert banned by watchdog
Virgin Media 'fastest wi-fi' advert banned by watchdog
Advertising regulator tells firm to withdraw "fastest wi-fi guarantee of any major provider" advert.
Holy shit, actual regulatory agencies doing their job? WTF is the world coming to?
Someone probably didn't pay someone enough.
And what about the fact that they can't guarantee any wifi speed because what they provide is Internet connectivity to the router, and wifi speed depends on the distance from the router, walls or floors in between, interference with other access points and radio emitters, etc?
Part of the guarantee is that they will install WiFi boosters and some other bits and pieces. Will give you a discount if that is not enough.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
A Virgin Media advert has been banned for misleading customers into thinking the firm offered faster wi-fi than its rivals.
Virgin said it found the ruling "slightly baffling", and maintained it guaranteed a faster minimum speed than its competitors.
As a result, Virgin Media cannot run the ad again, and the regulator told the firm "to ensure that they did not imply that they guaranteed the fastest wi-fi service of all major broadband providers if that was not the case".
The advert was displayed on the homepage of Virgin Media's website on 3 July 2023, under the headline "our wi-fi guarantee".
In its response to the ASA, Virgin said "a large number of major broadband providers promoted wi-fi guarantees to consumers".
"Given no consumers complained about the advert, and independent polling has shown the majority of people correctly understood what our claim meant, it's slightly baffling that the ASA has ruled in this way," a spokesman said.
The original article contains 492 words, the summary contains 157 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Virgin are not wrong though. Unless you pay for a dedicated 1gb bearer you have zero chance of getting anything close to VM gigabit.
That... Has nothing to do with what's going on here.
They claimed their "wifi" was the "fastest" because had the highest "minimum guaranteed speed". That speed is no where near 1Gbps. It guarantees 30Mbps.
This is not about having a 1-5gbps backbone, it's about convincing people that basically the same wifi is faster than the competition, which is extremely misleading.
Even if their backbone is faster, that's not even the argument they're making. And even if it was, it's not like people are likely to even notice that difference.
Yep I'm way way off. Even so, I'm pretty sure EE, BT and others have claimed similar things in the past.
I don't think "anything close" is even vaguely true. I have openreach FTTP at 900mbps down, and the bandwidth is the same or better than I ever got with virgin gigabit. I'm also about to switch to another FTTP provider who provides 900mbps down 900mbps up for £25 a month. Plus with both of those I can pay a little extra to have a monthly rolling contract.
Additionally my average latency dropped by more than half when ditching Virgin. I was genuinely shocked at how much better it was.
TIL what is a watchdog
If I had to guess I'd bet one of their competitors tipped the regulators off to this. Money may even have changed hands. Based on the article they do have the fasted minimum speed so it would not be wrong to say so.
That isn't the point. The article explains that Virgin intended it to mean they guarantee 30Mbps. But customers would interpret it to mean they have the guaranteed fastest speed.
The distinction is the specific 30Mbps guarantee vs actually being guaranteed fastest of any competitor.
I guess it is ambiguous what "fastest" means, so customers could be misled. Private infrastructure seems to always have these problems. Almost like a profit driven business can't have the customers best interests in mind.