Virgin Media's broadband speed advertising

Virgin Media have stood up against broadband speed advertising claiming that audiences find the advertised speeds misleading. Only 9% of respondents in a survey for Virgin Media said that they believe that broadband advertising is accurate and 93% of audiences believed that they should only be able to advertise the average received broadband by the majority of customers. All broadband providers tend to advertise speeds “up to” a certain speed. In July, Ofcom found that only 46% of the advertised broadband speed was being received.

The ASA banned an advert by BT, which claimed that the 20Mbps service was consistently faster than its 8Mbps, after they found it to be misleading. Virgin media have now promised to advertise to customers exactly what they are receiving on average each month.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, stated: "People are paying for faster and faster broadband but being ripped off by unscrupulous providers who can't deliver their promised speeds to even a single customer”

Well James, I bought your virgin media services last month and you advertised the fastest broadband around… any chance of me receiving this soon?