A BT advert has been banned for misleading customers over the speed of its broadband service, according to marketing news sources.

The advert, which was an instalment in the long-running “Adam and Jane” campaign, featured male protagonist Adam looking around a house with an estate agent as he spoke to partner Jane on his mobile.

During the conversation, the estate agent tries to bring up a web page on his laptop but has to wait some time for the site to load. Jane goes to the same page from her home computer, and the site loads instantly.

The estate agent then apologises to Adam for the delay, before a voice-over says: “BT is rolling out up to 20 meg speeds to give you a consistently faster broadband throughout the day, even at peak times.”

According to the Press Association, the advert received 17 complaints from viewers and BT competitors, claiming that promises of 20Mb speeds were misleading and could not be substantiated.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) agreed that there was insufficient evidence to back up BT’s 20Mb claims, and decided that the advert was likely to mislead customers.

Following its decision to ban the advert, the ASA told BBC News: “Because we had not seen sufficient evidence to support the claim that BT’s new broadband service was consistently faster than its existing 8Mb service even at peak times, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”

BT said it was disappointed by the ASA’s decision, and said in a statement that “there was certainly no intention to mislead.”

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