BT's loathsome lovebirds get the chop after advert is banned over misleading speed claims

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a BT television commercial on the grounds that it is misleading customers over broadband speeds.

Although the ASA has only received 17 complaints about the advert, featuring lovesick duo Adam and Jane, a voiceover clearly states that BT is "rolling out up to 20 meg speeds" as the footage oozes by. The ASA found little in the way of evidence to back up the claims and said that it was misleading.

While the majority of the criticism came from members of the public, rival broadband companies including Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin also lodged their own complaints about the commercial. The general feeling was that BT's claims of being able to offer 20Mb was too vague, with the voice over purring "BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband throughout the day even at peak times."

Commenting on its conclusion, 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."

"We noted BT's new service was available to fewer than half of all households and the roll-out, increasing that figure to 75%, was anticipated to take around two years.

"We noted that a significant proportion of the population could not get the service at the time the ad appeared and therefore considered the ad should have made that clear. Because it did not, we concluded that it was likely to mislead."

Responding to the outcome, BT said in a statement: "We are disappointed by the ASA's adjudication. At the time the ads appeared, BT had just started rolling out a new up to 20Mb broadband service across the country and we wanted to highlight the higher speeds available in newly enabled exchange areas offering customers consistently faster web browsing in comparison to BT's up to 8Mb service."

"There was certainly no intention to mislead."