Only three viewers (presumably Talktalk customers) complained, but that was enough to kickstart the wrist slapping process that led to this decision.
Talktalk said that the availability referred to the entirety of its service between January and August last year and that the numbers reflect the period its service was available (that figure stood at 99.9986% or just under five minutes over eight months).
However the ASA justly pointed out that the average customer might not be aware of the difference between the provider's core network and his or her own internet connection.
The ruling reads "We considered most consumers would be interested in the reliability of their end-to-end broadband connection up to the point of their router or into their home, rather than the reliability of certain portions of the overall connection, when making a decision to purchase a broadband package with a particular internet service provider."
The product mentioned in that particular advert also attracted criticism as it was only available to new customers rather than existing ones.
Talktalk has quietly managed to carve a significant portion of the broadband market in the UK. Earlier this year, it acquired Tesco's Blinkbox and broadband services while it formed an alliance with Sky over super-fast broadband and brought Virgin Media ADSL customers onboard.
