RevK of AAISP, Virgin Media and 'Fibre Optic Broadband'

[Ignitionnet]

Amusing.

RevK's own blog along with the call where the unfortunate sales bot misinforms him.

Fingers crossed we can get shot of this awful ASA decision to allow Virgin Media and indeed BT to advertise hybrid services as fibre optic broadband. This was one case where Virgin Media blazed the trail and were the first in the world to advertise cable as fibre optic.

It was tried in the USA and, amusingly, smacked down. Scary when the USA regards something as misleading and we don't.

We are slowly but surely seeing fibre to premises, perhaps time now for the real fibre optic broadband to stand up.

I do feel for the poor guy on the other end of the phone, but totally blame VM's advertising people for the predicament. At some point someone would've pushed it.

[joglynne]

I also feel sorry for the VM rep.

Does he toe the party line and get chewed up by a savvy customer or admit the customer is correct and get chewed up by VM for publicly admitting that they wrongly describe their method of delivery? Which ever way he went he should have realised he was on to a hiding. He does lose some sympathy points though when he talked about BT, it is always best to stick to what you do know rather than spout waffle about a competitor in order to impress a customer with his technical knowledge.

VM never needed to make the claims they did, they had the faster service so why they had to Gild the Lilly beats me as it was obvious that someone would call them out about their claim eventually. I am only surprised it has taken this long.

[Qtx]

Had someone at VM insist that their service is fibre to the premises too. Even after I explained I have worked with networks for 17 or 18 years, implying I have a bit more knowledge on the subject than them, and know for a fact it's copper coax from the cabinet to the premises they told me I was wrong. She pent ages trying to convince me otherwise too.

Unfortunately the deflections heard in this call by the VM complaints guy is typical of trying to progress complaints of any kind going by my own experience. They either want you to accept a few quid off for your troubles or allow you to cut you service and when you ask how to progress the complaint further they state that you can't, they are as high as you can go. No mention of CISAS. Diabolical really.

Ban all FTTC/FTTN operators from advertising their service as fibre broadband. Then watch the the PR peeps make Hybrid network sound as awesome as they can and confuse people in to thinking it's better than FTTP.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

We are slowly but surely seeing fibre to premises, perhaps time now for the real fibre optic broadband to stand up..

Perhaps we will see FTTP services marketed as "Truly fibre optic" just like we saw Unlimited services advertised as "Truly unlimited" to differentiate them from service that were called "Unlimited" but not-really-unlimited. Hybrid-limited-unlimited.

[Skie]

It will only stop when BT or VM start to sell FTTP to the mass market. They will complain to their mates in the ASA the the other is not offering the same product and the rules will change.

Until that happens they will merrily continue misleading people.Same thing happened when BT and others started dropping caps, the ASA suddenly decided unlimited meant no or very minor limits and VM had to adjust their throttling to make it fit the ever changing definition.

[muppetman11]

Update on this story

[qasdfdsaq]

They have been ordered to apologise to me for mis-selling fibre optic broadband which is clearly not. They have missed the deadline and not apologised in spite of a ruling against them.”

Ha.

Wonder if they're just staying silent hoping this'll blow over...