Cablevision took a massive public relations beating four months ago after an FCC study showed that the company failed to provide the speeds they advertised 50% of the time. Since then we'd noted that Cablevision had been quietly bumping delivered speeds, and yesterday the FCC confirmed that Cablevision had made serious strides over the last four months -- now delivering advertised speeds 90% of the time during peak hours. It didn't take long for Cablevision to seize on the announcement, filing suit against Verizon -- then settling that lawsuit with Verizon for an undisclosed sum.

Cablevision recently escalated the dispute with a new series of ads claiming Cablevision's faster than FiOS -- at least as long as you're comparing Cablevision's 50 Mbps service to Verizon's slowest-available FiOS speed. In a new press statement, the National Advertising Division of the Better Business Bureau has given Cablevision a wrist slap for the ads, several of which insist Optimum Online is "3X faster than FiOS" well, aren't true:

NAD recommended that the advertiser modify the challenged advertisements to make the basis of comparison for the 3X Faster claim clear to consumers by adding it to the main claim rather than disclosing the basis of comparison in a fine print disclosure. NAD noted in its decision that the upstream speeds available to consumers who subscribe to the Optimum Online Ultimate Triple Play bundled package with Optimum Boost are not "3X Faster" than the upstream speeds available via Verizon s Triple Play bundled package.

The NAD process is a self regulatory system where cases can be handed off to the FTC for false advertising enforcement. However, most ads have already run and had their impact by the time competitors get around to retracting misleading claims.
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Tags: basis, better business bureau, Cablevision, Claim, misleading claims, national advertising division, play, Slap, time competitors, Verizon

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