Misleading broadband advertising?
When Telkom first launched its Do Broadband campaign, other players in the industry complained to the Advertising Standards Authority that the advertisement was misleading. The TV advertisement created the impression that one could watch videos and listen to all the music you liked. One of the other ISPs complained that it was misleading.
The question in my mind is this: was it really misleading? After all you can download a video on a dial-up if you have all the time in the world and can afford to pay the connection charges and that the server you connect to does not time out. Some people do these crazy things.
Currently Neotel is running an interesting advertisement along a similar theme and that is all around the cap. You can download as many songs as you like because the cap is 2500 meg. If you listen quickly it sounds huge. After all, the other broadband connection suppliers only offer 2Gig, 3Gig and 4Gig caps. Sounds so little compared to Neotel’s 2500 Meg! Is Neotel misleading the public by using an uncommon format when stating the cap size or are they using poetic license? I think it is clever advertising.
An interesting poster seen around Pretoria on lamp poles is by newcomer to the internet and broadband world, Screamer Telecoms. Their slogan goes something like “connect to the internet screaming fast”. They have come out of the blue with some interesting and very competitive offerings and clever advertising.
A real beef I have about some of the broadband advertising is that most ads, if not all, omit telling you what uplink speed they are offering. There are one or two companies that offer the same uplink and downlink speed but most are offering an asymmetrical service with a dismal upload speed. Of course, advertisers get away with advertising connect at 1 024 or even higher speed and keeping quiet about their dismal upload speed with the clause that covers all eventualities: conditions apply.
I guess when they launched their service at 512, an upload speed of 128 was quite acceptable because most users were mostly downloading but with the emergence of YouTube and other social networks a low uplink speed has become a huge irritation.
I can’t help thinking that the ISP industry is not responding to market changes quick enough.
Broadband advertising discussion
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