BT Hits Back At Virgin’s ‘Stop The Con’ Campaign

BT has hit back at rival ISP Virgin Media after it launched a campaign earlier this week for ISPs to ‘stop the broadband con.’

As predicted, Virgin Media’s call for clarity about broadband speeds in the UK, seems to have suitably annoyed ISPs and other observers, after it had urged consumers to ‘demand an end to misleading broadband advertising.’

Virgin Media even managed to rope in Richard Branson. “I’m challenging all broadband providers to be honest with their customers and ask people to add their voice to the campaign by signing up to Stopthebroadbandcon.org,” he said.

BT Reaction

Virgin Media’s campaign also includes an online petition, where users can add their name calling for change. But this has provoked a quick reaction from BT, one of the largest ISPs in the UK.

“Virgin’s website describes ‘up to’ speeds for its packages as it launches a campaign against this practice!” said BT in an emailed statement to eWEEK Europe UK.

“In fact, in some areas of the site broadband is described simply as ’10Mb’ or ’20Mb’. Virgin has pitched to customers: ‘You’re not getting the broadband you are paying for’. However, it is the only ISP that charges based on speed, eg, up to 10MB, 20MB, 50MB,” BT added.

“We can already see from social media that since the announcement of stopthebroadbandcon.org, Virgin’s customers are saying that it has not provided the speeds they are paying for. Virgin also only includes two-thirds of its customers in the speed honesty pledge,” BT said.

Virgin’s Limited Reach

BT then went onto point out that Virgin Media has essentially ‘cherry picked’ the most commercially viable regions (i.e highly populated areas) for its broadband services. BT on the other hand, has to provide its broadband service to almost all of the UK, including towns, villages and hamlets where Virgin Media has no presence, because it is won’t make enough money from those areas.

“Virgin has chosen to serve mainly highly populated areas. BT’s broadband service goes just about everywhere: we supply the parts that others simply cannot, or do not want to reach,” said BT. “As a consequence of this and the laws of physics, our average speed across the UK looks lower because we are supplying broadband to customers that Virgin doesn’t want, over very long lines, which cause loss of speed.”

“We are proud to serve rural customers who would not have broadband at any speed were it left to other providers,” said BT. “Where we serve more highly populated areas our speeds are lightning fast, especially now that we are rolling out BT Infinity, our fibre broadband service.”

Speed Clarification

And BT also tried to clarify the confusion surround the term – ‘up to’. In September a survey of 1,000 people carried out by ICM discovered that nine out of ten people find broadband advertising misleading and confusing.

“In ads for broadband of ‘up to 20Mbs’, the ‘up to’ speed is a technical capability. It’s a product description,” said BT.

“It doesn’t describe the actual speed every customer will get and most people understand what ‘up to’ means whether or not they understand the technicalities of broadband. It means that ‘up to 20Mb is possible with this product. In fact, up to 24Mb is possible but we don’t say that as so few people could get it in reality,” said BT.

“National average speed descriptions are meaningless for BT customers,” said the ISP. “Every line is different and affected by a variety of factors: distance from the exchange, internal wiring and interference from electrical appliances.”

“We give customers an accurate guide to likely speed before they place an order; they will get an accurate prediction of the speed they’re likely to get, specific to their line, so they know exactly what they’re getting,” said BT. “However it’s advertised, all advertisers should use the same terminology and we must take care not to create a situation more complicated or confusing for customers than the current one.”

Speed Claims

TalkTalk told eWEEK Europe UK that it did not have a comment on the line speed issue at this time.

In July industry regulator Ofcom took the ISPs to task for continuing to advertise speeds which they could not deliver.

It should be noted that BT has been pinged a couple of times over its broadband advertising. In late August the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) rapped BT over the knuckles for its broadband speed claims in its national adverts, featuring the BT “Adam and Jane” couple. Earlier that month BT had been warned for one of its fibre adverts that boasted that its fibre-based service could deliver the Internet ‘instantly’.

The coalition government meanwhile has pledged to roll out a miserly 2Mbps broadband to all British homes by 2015.