Broadband,Mobile Broadband,Broadband Speed Test

We might be about to determine the end of ‘unlimited’ broadband packages being widely advertised in the broadband and telecoms market along with unrealistic speed expectations fostered by goods listing the highest attainable speed for the service qualified by saying the speed is ‘up to’ the number quoted. ‘Unlimited’ broadband packages generally in fact have a usage limit or fair usage policy hidden in the small print which will contradict the ‘unlimited’ claim on the product. New Media Age reports that the Advertising Standards Agency is launching a review which will be carried out by the British Code of Marketing Practice (BCAP) and Committee of Marketing Practice (CAP) into how Net services are advertised and it intends to look at these two areas in specific.
The industry is rife with these unlimited claims, which are nearly often limited in some manner. At the end of May possibly, O2 clarified that on their O2 ‘Access’ broadband item, advertised as ‘unlimited’, users really should basically use only 10GB a month. This came to light at a time when O2 had just launched a new advertising campaign to ‘nobble broadband niggles.’

The recent announcement of new smartphone contracts from O2 does move away from utilizing ‘unlimited’ to describe their merchandise as O2 believe that the amount of data use is unsustainable at the moment. Vodafone have been giving a similar message since December when ‘unlimited’ was removed from their Net packages to avoid users becoming confused by ‘unlimited’ offers that weren’t really unlimited.

It will definitely be interesting to see how the review determines the market need to proceed. Under the current rules we are likely to see advertisers continuing to push the rules to the limit with unsupportable claims. Broadband speed marketing is really a tough beast to regulate in comparison to ‘unlimited’ broadband claims, as there needs to be a way for providers to differentiate the merchandise they offer. It’s consequently most likely that we won’t see the end of broadband adverts claiming speeds of ‘up to x Mbps’ but perhaps they may well be required to state with equal prominence the average speed and the headline speed that users receive on the product. Ofcom’s ‘Code of Practice for broadband speeds’ helps in this area to some degree, requiring operators to give users an estimate on the speed they’re likely to receive based on line estimates prior to they order, however this can’t be utilized inside same way where billboard or TV adverts are seen by large numbers of people.