Certainly a surprise to the industry - the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) have ruled against a national press ad put out by Bulldog with references to “Up to”.

In a move applicable to all ISPs, the ASA labelled Bulldog’s advert for “Upto 8Mbps” as misleading because they didnt clearly state that “top speeds varied significantly”.

It’s interesting that the ASA have adopted this stance, yet seem to be quite happy with services sold as “Unlimited” - which arguably leads to far more confusion and misleading.

Quite how certain providers are still allowed to advertise “Unlimited” when usage policies exist is beyond me. Tiscali defend their advertising of “Unlimited” stating that it refers to “Unlimited Time Online” rather than an unlimited amount of data transfer. In my opinion, ambiguous references such as this could (and should) be seen as being a lot more misleading than simply stating a product as being “Upto”. Afterall, that is what it is - ‘Up to’ a certain speed. Should the industry be advertising 8Mb broadband as “somewhere between 0Kbps - 8Mbps”? I personally think this is ludicrous.

You can view the adjudication on the ASA website, here.

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