Vodafone's 'lightyears ahead' broadband claim found misleading

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (“ASA”) has taken the hatchet to Vodafone UK’s mobile broadband advertising.

The ads typically showed a USB broadband stick looking like a rocket jetting into outerspace, with a strapline explaining that Vodafone’s mobile broadband service is ‘light years ahead’ of the competition. The ad also aimed to point out that Vodafone’s service was superior to the competition.

3 and T-Mobile, together with a member of the public, took issue with the ads. The ASA investigated and upheld the complaints.

Naughty Vodafone!

In fairness I tend to find their entire service the most reliable — still — but I note that in the ASA findings, the pointed out that the LCC test (that Voda used to support their claims) found that:

In six out of the 10 regions of the UK tested, one of the other networks had a faster average time to download a web page than Vodafone.

I’m willing to bet that was 3 who was faster…