DURHAM – Google Fiber will alter future advertising following a determination by the National Advertising Division (NAD) that some of its speed claims were found to be unsupported. The organization also recommended that Google discontinue certain statements about providing a superior reliability.
But the NAD also found that Google Fiber did provide a reasonable basis for “certain superior speed claims for its fiber service as compared with cable internet providers in its footprint,” according to a statement.
Specifically, Charter had challenged claims made by Google Fiber on its webpage that read “When you have up to 77x faster upload speeds than cable internet, everything you do goes much faster – from quickly sending large files, to gaming without lag, to experiencing smoother, more reliable video calls.”
The decision was announced in a press statement and later reported by Fierce Telecom, which noted that the decision by the NAD followed a challenge from Charter Communications.
Both Google Fiber and Charter Communications, through its Spectrum brand, provide broadband internet access to portions of North Carolina.
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Substantiated claims
According to the statement from NAD, the organization studied whether Google Fiber’s potential upload speeds were faster than Charter’s. NAD found that as Google, through its Fiber service, offers 1 gigabyte per second upload speed compared to Charter’s 35 megabyte per second upload speed. That led to the organization concluding in its statement that Google could support a modified claim.
However, NAD concluded that the use of “up to 77x faster uploads” conveyed the message that the difference in upload speed was taken as a comparison between two comparable metrics and speed tiers. But that is not the case, the organization said in a statement, thus it concluded the the use of such “up to” claims could mislead consumers “where there is an apples-to-oranges comparison.”
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Reliability
Google Fiber recently announced a new guarantee of reliability for its Fiber service for qualified small business customers.
Under the program, Google provides a monthly uptime guarantee of at least 99.9% of time during the month and those enrolled would receive monthly reports. Any business that sees below 99.9% uptime would be credited 25% of the cost of monthly service under the program.
But the NAD found “that evidence that fiber may be better at resisting outages is not a good fit” for certain advertising claims.
Those include the claims “fewer points of failure than cable internet” and “fewer outages than cable internet,” according to the NAD statement.
According to the statement, Google Fiber voluntarily discontinued certain quantified reliability claims during the proceedings of the decision. The company also modified its “99.9% reliable connection” claim. Now, there is an added disclosure that the claim refers to network availability and excludes some types of outages, the statement noted.
Google, in an advertiser statement, stated that it would “comply with NAD’s decision,” according to the press statement.
The National Advertising Division is a part of BBB National Programs, which describes itself on its website as a “where companies, industry experts, and trade associations work together within a self-regulatory environment to foster industry best practices in truth-in-advertising.”
