National Advertising Review Board Finds That Charter’s Claims Referring to Specific Cable Internet Service Speeds are Not Misleading

New York, NY – July 6, 2023 – A panel of the National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the appellate advertising body of BBB National Programs, determined that Charter Communications, Inc.’s quantified speed claims do not mislead reasonable consumers. Examples of those claims include:

• “Ultra-Fast speeds of 400 Mbps”
• “Super-fast reliable speeds of 200 Mbps to power all your devices with no data caps”

The advertising at issue had been challenged at BBB National Programs’ National Advertising Division (NAD) by Frontier Communications Parent, Inc. Frontier offers residential internet service using fiber and DSL services over copper phone wire. Charter offers its residential internet service as Spectrum internet through a hybrid fiber coaxial network. 

Following NAD’s decision (Case No. 7153), Charter appealed NAD’s recommendations to qualify its speed claims to indicate whether the speed claims refer to download or upload speeds. In support of its recommendation, NAD had concluded that both download and upload speeds are material considerations for consumers when selecting an internet service provider (ISP).

A majority of the NARB panel disagreed with NAD’s recommendation in the underlying decision, crediting Charter’s argument that it has been an industry practice for approximately two decades that quantified speed references in ISP advertising communicate download speeds. Absent any evidence of consumer confusion, the NARB panel concluded the challenged quantified speed claims made by Charter do not mislead reasonable consumers. One panel member dissented and found that the quantified speed claims, in context, were ambiguous, and could convey to reasonable consumers that the “speed” reference is to both upload and download speeds.

Charter stated that it “delivers speed tier options up to 1 Gbps to all of its customers and welcomes the appellate panel’s decision to set aside NAD’s recommendation with respect to the industry-standard manner in which these speed tier options are advertised.”

All BBB National Programs case decision summaries can be found in the case decision library. For the full text of NAD, NARB, and CARU decisions, subscribe to the online archive.