BT judgement - a question

The latest BT ad has been banned because 'a website on an 8Mb/s line will not load any faster than on a 20Mb/s line.' My VM 20Mb connection is noticeably faster than my BT one, so am I missing something?

As far as I can see, that was not the complete and definitive reason for the ban.

"viewers objected to the visual comparison that a website on a 20meg service would not load any faster than with an 8meg service"

That can be looked at two ways. Maybe for minimal sites, they will appear to load no quicker on an 8Mb connection compared to a 20Mb connection.

However, if a site has heavy content such as many images, flash, etc - it will generally load much quicker than a slower connection.

Matt

Interesting to read the ASA judgement, which includes the following explanation in relation to the point about whether a 20Mb line would be faster than an 8Mb line when accessing a web site.

We noted the complainants concern that, irrespective of the difference in performance between the two services, a 20 Mbit/s connection would not be able to access a typical website any faster than an 8 Mbit/s service. We understood speed of access to websites related to other factors, such as the speed of the connecting server and other traffic accessing a website along with the speed of the users connection. Although we noted a 20 Mbit/s connection was likely to have a greater potential speed in general, we understood that, in most cases, there would not be an appreciable difference between the downloading times of both services for a typical website.

My own experience is that the line speed can make a big difference with all but the simplest of web sites - eg not obvious on the Google home page, makes a bigger difference on BBC etc.

Clearly issues such as a very slow PC could negate the impact of a faster line, however my own experience mirrors yours.

Based on the decision the ASA should now bee looking at the Virgin ads which claim a Virgin 20Mb connection is faster than a BT 8Mb.

Same comparison - so why is the BT ad banned and not the Virgin one?

I upgraded my laptops from 1GB memory to 2GB. Big difference when opening multiple windows with different websites in each. And the router makes a big difference IMHO. I upgraded my Virgin system to N wireless and I get 15Mb/s at least, even at peak times, often 18 or 19.

they didn't or couldn't demonstrate a faster web loading speed to substantiate the claim in the ad.