As a techy geek, whenever I hear the word “Giga”, I think of “Gigabit”. Indeed, the word itself actually denotes a billion, and it’s got Vodafone into a spot of bother as they roll out their direct fibre solution – Gigafast.
The offering is a FTTP (Fibre to the Premises) connection which average up to 900Mbps. That’s pretty decent, and indeed it’s faster than my Virgin Business connection. However, my connection isn’t FTTP – the last part is over coax (get the whole story here). It’s going to slow down due to that last bit. So, to get the extra speed, Vodafone are supplying fibre optic all the way to your house.
Trouble is, they’ve got into a spot of bother after their ads were challenged by Virgin Media. They argued that the “gigafast” wording implied that Vodafone were providing speeds of one gigabit per second. In my head, that’s a perfectly reasonable assumption, however the Vodafone ads actually showed that the maximum average was 900 megabits per second.
The Advertising Standards Authority has now banned the adverts for being “misleading”, however – the product continues to be sold as Gigafast here. Still, I’ve got to be honest… 900Mbps symmetrical is bloody quick.