The advertising regulators received a total of ten complaints from prospective customers, after the campaign ad was aired. The campaign was created by CHI & Partners, and was deemed inaccurate by the viewers. Some claimed to have called TalkTalk to sign up for the promotion, only to be told that they were outside its unbundled network area, and would have to pay an additional amount.

TalkTalk told ASA that it failed to mention that its LLU network did not cover the entire population - current coverage was only 80 percent. That was a mere oversight on their part. They further claimed that all their non-broadcast ads clearly stated that the offer was available to only 80 percent of UK households. ASA ruled that the ad was indeed misleading, and that TalkTalk should amend the ad to accurately reflect the promotion.

The ASA is seeing an increase in complaints against broadband providers. To aid and encourage transparency in the market, Ofcom will be releasing a voluntary ISP code of practice in early 2009. This should also help the consumer in gaining a better understanding of the caveats.

This is not the first time that Carphone’s TalkTalk has been under fire in the last 12 months. In fact, they were forced to make an apology last year after launching their free broadband service in April 2007. They received such a tremendous response for sign up that they could not cope with the demands. There was therefore a huge delay in installing the free broadband service for subscribers, resulting in customer dissatisfaction.