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The fibre wholesaler is calling on the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) to update its guidance on the use of the term ‘fibre’
New research from AllPoints Fibre, conducted in partnership with YouGov, shows that the UK public remains confused about what exactly constitutes ‘fibre’ with regards to broadband advertising.
The study, which polled 2,000 adults online, found that 70% of Brits were aware that fibre provided faster and more reliable broadband than copper, but 77% were not aware that part-copper (i.e., fibre-to-the-cabinet, FTTC) connections could still be described as ‘fibre’ in advertising.
As a result, 72% of Brits agreed that advertising FTTC as ‘fibre’ was misleading.
In an open letter to the ASA, AllPoints Fibre CEO Jarlath Finnegan called on the regulator to update its guidance based on these findings.
“The ASA’s decision from November 2017, when full fibre broadband was available to less than a million premises (or around 3% of the UK), needs to be revisited urgently,” reads the letter. “Full fibre is now available to over 23 million premises (or over 70% of UK premises). Our research finds that the buying behaviour of customers changes once they understand the difference between part-copper and full fibre broadband, directly contradicting the research that underpinned the ASA’s decision in November 2017.”
Confusion around the terms ‘fibre’, ‘full fibre’, and ‘FTTC/FTTP’ is nothing new for the UK broadband industry. Around this time last year, Ofcom adjusted its guidance based on research showing that 46% of customers that reported being on ‘full fibre’ were actually on FTTC. That same research showed that and 27% of customers do not fully understand the vernacular used by broadband providers relating to network technology.
Ofcom’s new guidance tells ISPs to provide more thorough description of their services’ underlying technologies, as well as avoiding using the term ‘fibre’ on its own to describe services.
In his open letter, Finnegan notes that the advertising authorities of various European countries have already clamped down on the ambiguous use of the term ‘fibre’; for example, French regulators limited the term to cases related to ‘full fibre’ (i.e., fibre-to-the premise, FTTP) in 2016, with Ireland doing likewise in 2019.
“In a public statement in September 2024, your organisation said that it was keeping a ‘watching brief’ on this issue. Given that fully seven years have now passed since your original decision, we believe the time for consideration is now over. We urge you to take action on this vital issue,” concluded the letter.
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