The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned several Vodafone broadband adverts after BT lodged complaints, which claimed that the ISP was being “misleading” by claiming that customers could “switch from BT to Vodafone and get the same broadband for less” (emphasis on the “same broadband” part). But that wasn’t the only issue.
The adverts themselves – reflecting several promotions via TV, Twitter (X) and the operator’s own website – related to Vodafone’s “Great British Broadband Switch” campaign, which was launched back in March 2024 (here). But BT complained the related promotions were misleading because, they said, Vodafone’s broadband “did not provide the same performance“.
In addition, BT also complained when Vodafone suggested that “millions of BT customers across the UK are realising they can switch to Vodafone and get the same broadband for less”. BT said they did not believe millions of BT customers had switched or were considering doing so.
The difficulty here is that not every broadband package can truly be considered the “same” when switching between ISPs, due to differences in the bundled router, WiFi technology, the underlying network, various value-added extras and so forth. Vodafone attempted to support their generalised claims by using Ofcom’s UK home broadband performance report from 2023, which was not only old but also not fully comprehensive. Needless to say, the ASA upheld BT’s complaints.
ASA Ruling Ref: A24-1241350 Vodafone Ltd
We understood Vodafone offered six broadband plans which were comparable to BT plans: two FTTC and four FTTP. However, the Ofcom report included data on only one Vodafone broadband service – their 67 Mbps FTTC plan. While the report included data for a comparable BT service, the evidence did not relate to all six of the broadband plans included in the ads’ comparisons. The data was also collected in March 2023, one year before the ads were published.
Furthermore, we understood that the performance metric data collated in the Ofcom report was collected at the router, rather than by connected devices. We acknowledged this was a robust methodology which factored out the potential for metrics to be affected by Wi-Fi bandwidth. However, because the claims in the ads would be understood to relate to the full internet connection up to the device, rather than to the router, we considered the data did not support the claims. For those reasons, we considered the comparative data in the Ofcom report did not support the advertising claims as they would be understood by consumers.
We had not seen evidence which supported claims that BT customers who switched to Vodafone would, in practice, get nearly identical performance, including through the use of nearly identical technology. Therefore, we concluded the claims “the same broadband” and “the same broadband technology” had not been substantiated and were misleading.
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The TV ad stated that “millions of BT customers across the UK are realising they can switch to Vodafone and get the same broadband for less”. We considered that claim would be understood by viewers to be an objective claim that millions of people had come to this realisation already and had either switched from BT to Vodafone or were actively considering doing so. We further considered that the impression that there was a growing trend of people switching from BT to Vodafone was likely to have a more persuasive effect in encouraging viewers to look into switching than if the ad had not referenced that “millions of BT customers […] are realising they can switch”.
Vodafone had said the purpose of the ad was to bring BT’s customer base to the realisation that switching could save them money. The ad itself was therefore intended to educate BT customers about Vodafone’s pricing compared to BT, rather than informing them of an evidenced trend of people switching that was already occurring. Because we had not seen evidence to substantiate the claim that millions of BT broadband customers already had switched, or were actively considering switching, to Vodafone, we concluded the claim was misleading.
As usual, the ASA banned Vodafone’s broadband adverts in their current form and warned the operator “not to state or imply that their broadband services provided a nearly identical performance to BT’s services“, or to “state or imply that millions of BT broadband customers already had switched, or were actively considering switching,” unless they held evidence to prove that.