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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a digital poster advert for EE’s fixed broadband packages after several rival providers, including Vodafone and Sky (Sky Broadband), complained that part of its claims were misleading because they were not verifyable.
The poster, which was seen on 5th June 2025 and 31st October 2025, contained two headline claims in large print – “MORE PEOPLE ARE CHOOSING EE BROADBAND” and “SWITCH TO THE UK’S FASTEST GROWING BROADBAND PROVIDER”. Small text at the foot of the ad stated “To verify see ee.co.uk/claims”.
Both Sky UK and Vodafone complained the advert was “misleading” on two grounds – 1) because they understood the claims did not take into account customers who had migrated from one brand to another within the BT Group; and, 2) it was not verifiable. But the ASA rejected the first (1) complaint because they said the evidence supported EE’s claim, although they upheld the second (2) complaint over whether the broader claims were verifiable.
ASA Ruling Ref: G25-1321697 EE Ltd
Because the ad initially did not link to any relevant verification information, and the document that was later added initially contained insufficient information to understand the nature of the comparison, and because the verification page contained an additional outdated document and did not provide a clear route to verify the claims, we concluded that the ad did not meet the requirements for verifiability.
On that point, the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.34 (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
The full ruling is quite a laborious read and centres a lot on the data that EE provided (or didn’t provide) to verify the claim, but we think the key summary above is enough to cover the main points. As usual the ASA told EE to stop being naughty and to in future “ensure that their comparative claims were verifiable“.