BT ad banned over broadband speeds claim

The instalment in the ongoing saga showed Adam being shown around a property by an estate agent as he talked to Jane on his mobile, who was viewing the house online from her home computer.

It showed the estate agent waiting for a web page to load, while Jane loaded the web site instantly and quickly looked at a series of images.

The estate agent apologised to Adam, saying: "Six o'clock. Half the world's online," before a voice-over added: "BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband throughout the day even at peak times."

Radio and Press ads carried a similar message.

The ad drew 17 complaints from the public and competitors Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin, among them that the 20Mb (megabits per second) claim was misleading and could not be substantiated.

Others believed surfing a typical website would not be any faster with a 20Mb service than it would with the original 8Mb service, while three people said the speed at which Jane navigated various web pages was faster than anyone could achieve at any connection speed.

BT told the ASA that its new service, which was being rolled out when the ad screened, was faster than the old one, but that the sequence shown in the ad was not intended to be an actual comparison.

The ASA said: "Because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT's new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mb service even at peak times, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead."