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The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has declined to uphold a complaint against one of CityFibre’s direct mailing adverts for their new UK FTTP broadband network. The complaint was lodged by the BT Group after they suggested it “misleadingly implied there was no existing full fibre broadband at the address.”
The ad itself was one of CityFibre’s normal leaflets, which merely acted to notify homeowners (i.e. usually those within their targeted build areas) that they were “going to be building a brand new full fibre network in your area and wanted to let you know what’s going to happen“.
CityFibre said the direct mailing was sent to a resident in a location where they were building a new full fibre network, that was being funded using state aid from the UK government’s Project Gigabit programme. However, BT’s complaint arose from the fact that the property that had received the ad subject to the complaint, and the areas surrounding the address, did in fact have access to an existing full fibre network via Openreach.
The complaint is an interesting one because it’s not uncommon for such mailings to reach slightly outside their target areas (i.e. it can be difficult to be perfectly precise with these things and build plans may also change or be delayed). Put another way, any ruling in this area by the ASA could stand to impact a much larger number of network operators. But the ASA ultimately chose not to uphold BT’s complaint.
ASA Ruling (REF: A24-1271770 CityFibre Holdings Ltd)
Nevertheless, we considered the specific content of the ad and whether or not it stated or implied that no existing full fibre network was available at the property. The ad did not state or imply that their upcoming network was the only full fibre network or that other providers did not operate their own full fibre network in the area and, as such, we considered consumers were unlikely to take that impression from the claims when read in context. We therefore concluded that the ad was not misleading.
We don’t usually write about complaints that are not upheld, but this one touched on a subject of some interest. In addition, the ASA were only able to assess it under their older rules (the ad itself was seen when those were still in force), rather than the newer ‘Unfair Commercial Practices’ provisions in the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA). But it’s unclear whether using the newer rules would have made a difference.