Talk Talk in trouble over broadband advertisement

Carphone Warehouse owned Talk Talk has become one of the latest Internet Service Providers to run into trouble with the Advertising Standards Agency

The Advertising Standards Agency has reprimanded the Internet Service Provider, Talk Talk, which is owned by Carphone Warehouse, over an advertisement that it ran offering consumers free broadband if they took on a landline. The advertisement stated: “At TalkTalk we believe broadband should be free. When you get your landline from us we give you broadband that’s free.”

However, what the advertisement did not point out was that the broadband was only free for consumers that lived in areas covered by its LLU network. This would mean that around one fifth of the country would be excluded from the offer, and would still have to pay for the broadband.

Officials from Talk Talk said that around eighty percent of households would have qualified for the deal, but that those served by BT Wholesale would have had to pay an additional charge. Following this revelation a number of complaints were made to the Advertising Standards Agency, and the watchdog launched an investigation. The watchdog has now told Talk Talk that it cannot repeat the advertisements.

A report from the ASA read: “The ASA noted the free broadband service was not available in all areas of the UK due to the limited coverage of LLU. We acknowledged that TalkTalk did not have control of LLU but nevertheless considered that the ad did not make sufficiently clear that the free broadband service was not available to all TalkTalk customers. We concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.”

Carphone Warehouse, which owns the ISP, has recently put in a bid for the Italian Tiscali brand, according to reports, and if successful will be expanding its broadband operations and could become the nation’s largest ISP.