Comcast in Hot Seat Over Internet Speed Claims

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23, 2024 - An independent industry regulator has told Comcast – the country’s largest Internet Service Provider – to halt an ad campaign that it said misled consumers.

The National Advertising Division, an independent part of the BBB National Programs, advised Comcast to discontinue or modify its claim that its business internet service is 12 times faster than that of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Comcast, headquartered in Philadelphia, served about 32 million broadband internet subscribers as of June 30, 2024.

The company’s advertisement, according the National Advertising Division, did not clearly disclose the products being compared. NAD found that consumers could reasonably believe that Comcast’s business internet is 12 times faster than all services offered by the other ISPs.

National Advertising Division, under the leadership of President and CEO Eric Reicin, argued that Comcast’s advertising could not be supported. The division cited AT&T, which currently offers both 5G and fiber internet services at comparable speeds.

As a result, the National Advertising Division recommended that Comcast’s advertising should be limited to specific services, and avoid the message that its business internet is faster than AT&T’s internet service generally.

In response, Comcast noted its intent to comply with the recommendation offered by National Advertising Division, though it said that small business customers would expect the advertisement to refer specifically to fiber service, and not to 5G offerings.

Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to the BBB National Advertising Division as a part of the Better Business Bureau. After a restructure in 2019 from the Council of Better Business Bureaus, BBB National Programs was born as an independent, non-affiliated non-profit organization. The story has been corrected.