Sky Broadband advert banned by ASA

An advert placed by BSkyB that advertised Sky Broadband, has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for wrongly claiming that rival internet service providers carry out speed throttling.

The advert attacked the broadband services offered by Virgin Media and BT as it mentioned that Sky Broadband does not slow the broadband service down at peak times, but implied that both BT and Virgin Media do.

ASA received complaints from BT and a consumer who stated that only those users that go to the extreme are penalised, whereas BSkyB claimed that all BT and Virgin Media customers can be affected by traffic management measures.

The ASA ruling was that the Sky advert breached the guidelines on comparisons and truthfulness, and the ASA ordered that the advert should not be used anymore.