Background: Three launched its 5G service in the UK in August 2019. At the time, Three ran an advertising campaign online and on the national press, using the slogan “If it’s not Three, it’s not real 5G”, and stating that Three is the only UK mobile network whose spectrum holdings enable it to provide ‘real 5G’.
The ASA strikes down the ad: Three’s ad prompted complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) from BT, Vodafone, and some members of the public. On 25 March 2020, the ASA decided to ban the advert. Three’s consideration that its spectrum holdings and network structure set it apart from other 5G operators was not deemed by the ASA as a sufficient reason to justify the claim that “If it’s not Three, it’s not real 5G”. The ASA considered consumers were unlikely to be familiar with the technical specifications of 5G, and that they would primarily associate it with speeds that were significantly faster than 4G services. At the time the ads were seen, the choice of 5G devices was still very limited, and uptake of 5G services was still at an early stage. Because of that, differences in 5G capacity between networks were unlikely to result in material differences in the experiences of users at the time. Given that, the ASA considered Three's 5G service was not, at that time, likely to be so significantly better than other 5G services as to render them not "real" 5G, and concluded that Three’s claim was likely to mislead.
What next? The ASA ordered Three to make sure the ad does not appear in the forms that were subject to complaint. The authority also told Three it should ensure future ads did not use wording which suggested that the service offered by competitors did not provide the significantly faster speeds that 5G was expected to provide.
