Staff Writer
Bob Fernandez covers the telecommunications and media industries and frequently writes about Comcast Corp.
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Comcast Corp., the nation's largest residential-internet provider, will stop advertising itself as "delivering the fastest internet in America" and offering the "fastest in-home Wifi" to comply with ad-industry's self-regulatory group's criticism, the company said on Thursday.
But Comcast also could recast the "fastest internet" advertising to satisfy the concerns, a company official said.
The marketing spat is the latest salvo between Comcast and Verizon Communications Inc., which challenged Comcast's claims that were based on 60 million online crowd-sourced tests from Ookla in 2015. Subscribers took the internet speed tests on the website Speedtest.net.
Verizon spokesman Ray McConnville said the telecom giant was pleased with the advertising outcome and said that Verizon had the fastest download and upload speeds.
The industry's self-regulatory group is the National Advertising Review Board, which is administered by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. It did not dispute the results of the Ookla speed tests but said that Comcast failed to specify in its advertising what tier of service it was talking about when making the boast of the "fastest internet in America." More expensive tiers deliver faster internet.
The evidence "did not demonstrate that the consumers constituted a representative sample of Xfinity or Verizon Fios subscribers and Ookla's data did not provide any indication as to which [internet service provider] more consistently delivers the highest promised download speeds in any speed tier," the review board said.
The board also said that the claim that Comcast had the "fastest in-home Wifi" was, in fact, based on Comcast's Wifi router. To have the fastest in-home Wifi, a subscriber would have to pay for a fast internet tier – which would then lead to the "fastest in-home Wifi." This wasn't clear in the Comcast advertisements.
Comcast said it was pleased that National Advertising Review Board determined that the results of the crowdsourced data could be used in its advertisements. It also said it expected the group to hold competitors to the same standards.
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Published: February 9, 2017 — 1:19 PM EST | Updated: February 9, 2017 — 1:36 PM ESTThe Philadelphia Inquirer
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Source: Advertising board slaps Comcast over 'fastest internet in America' claims
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