Ordinary Gweilo

I have criticized the Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) in the past for their spineless response to the Internet access problems experienced in Hong Kong at the end of last year (through to the middle of January).  Now one of their adjucations on an unrelated matter has been overturned by the Telecommunications (Competition Provisions) Appeal Board.  No, I’d never heard of them either.

The story is that Hong Kong Broadband Network complained that PCCW were making misleading claims about the upload speed of their Netvigator broadband service.  PCCW’s ADSL (asymmetrical digital subscriber line) service has a maximum upload speed of around 640 kilobits per second, whereas HKBN use a fibre-optic network without the same limitation on upload speeds.  Hence 3mbps on ADSL and 3 mbps on fibre-optics aren’t quite the same thing, and HKBN think that consumers might be confused by the claims made by their competitors.  How thoughtful… 

OFTA rejected the complaint, but HKBN appealed, and "won".  The judgement is available on the citb website (pdf), and you can see that at times they struggled with all the complexities of the Intraweb:

PCCW will doubtless be slapped on the wrist for being so naughty, but they changed their advertising materials a long time ago, so it is all rather irrelevant.  Particularly because the complaint came from a competitor – who has also been the subject of complaints to OFTA for similar misleading statements (e.g. "Complaint against the Claimed Speed of Broadband Services provided by Hong Kong Broadband Network Limited – Outcome: Written Warning Issued").

And the people who sell Broadband will carry on lying being selective with the facts just as long as it helps them to sign up a customer or two.  For example, iCable will tell you that they have faster connection speeds than PCCW, but the reality is that in the evening (when most people want to use the service) it can be painfully slow if any of your neighbours are online at the same time.  On the other hand, if you have Now Broadband TV (and PCCW try to get all their customers to sign-up) that consumes a lot of bandwidth, whereas using Cable TV does not affect the speed of broadband (as far as I know).  And so on…