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Author Topic: Cityfibre Finds Support for Fibre Broadband Adverts Legal Challenge  (Read 843 times)

Bowdon

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https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/07/cityfibre-survey-finds-support-for-fibre-adverts-legal-challenge.html

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A Censuswide survey of 3,422 home broadband ISP users has found support for Cityfibre’s legal challenge of the current UK advertising rules, which they say “misleadingly” allows so-called hybrid fibre ISPs to promote their services as being “fibre optic” despite using slower metallic cables (e.g. copper).

Pure fibre optic ISPs generally deliver significantly faster speeds (i.e. they can handle multi-Gigabit or faster speeds) and are more reliable, while hybrid fibre (aka – part fibre) services use a mix of metallic and optical fibre cables, which tends to make them both a lot slower and less reliable.

Back in 2008 the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that it was happy for hybrid fibre services, such as those based off Openreach’s (BT) Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC / G.fast) technologies or Virgin Media’s EuroDOCSIS using Hybrid Fibre Coax platform, to use “fibre” in their advertising because the optical fibre cable still accounted for a big chunk of their networks.

In the past few cared about this because Gigabit capable Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP/H) style networks were in the minority but all that is now beginning to change, particularly with the government’s recent push for nationwide coverage by 2033. Last year the ASA finally agreed to review the situation but in the end they only recommended minor tweaks.

Naturally Cityfibre, which has built a lot of “full fibre” (FTTP) networks across the UK, disagreed and eventually managed to win a Judicial Review. In order to support that battle the company has today published the results of a new Censuswide survey (conducted during early July 2018), which it commissioned. Obviously there’s an element of vested interest here but the results are worth reflecting.

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    Summary of the Key Results

    * The majority (86%) thought the type of cable connecting them to the internet made a difference to the speed they received, but 65% didn’t think their current connection relied on copper cables or hybrid copper-fibre, even though this is the case for most consumers.

    * Some 24% think they already have fibre cables running all the way to their home (FTTP/H), despite this only being available to around 4% of UK properties.

    * Close to half (45%) believe that services currently advertised as “fibre” deliver this type of connectivity as standard, highlighting how confusing the status quo has made broadband for consumers.

    * Once the difference between hybrid copper-fibre connections and full fibre was explained, two thirds thought the advertising rules should be changed so that hybrid services could no longer be called “fibre”.

    * While just under two thirds (65%) said their broadband provider had described their connection as “fibre”, only 17% thought this connection would include copper cables.

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    Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said:

    “Years of misleading advertising of broadband speeds and technologies have left people totally confused about what they are paying for, undermining trust in the industry. It is time to put the customer at the heart of the full fibre rollout and ditch dishonest descriptions once and for all.

    We are calling on all broadband providers to stop using the word “fibre” unless it is describing a full fibre connection. Rather than waiting for the backward-looking ASA to be forced to act, the industry should stand as one and pave the way for a new generation of connected homes, businesses, towns and cities across the UK.”
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