Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a website promotion for London-focused broadband ISP CommunityFibre, which occurred after it was found to have misleadingly claimed to be both the “#1 rated internet provider on Trustpilot – with the most 5 star reviews” and “#1 Best ‘Internet Provider’“.
Just for some context. CommunityFibre has so far deployed their 5Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to serve 1.342 million homes (inc. 185k businesses within 200 metres of their network), albeit with the vast majority of that being present in London.
However, the ASA found that, when the companies in the same category as CommunityFibre were sorted by “highest number of reviews” on Trustpilot (at the time the promotions were seen – June 2025), two had a higher number of five-star reviews at over 182,000 and 65,000 five-star reviews respectively, compared to CommunityFibre that had over 60,000 five-star reviews.
ASA Ruling Ref: A25-1300873 Community Fibre Ltd
We understood that in order for Community Fibre to appear at the top of the list of ‘Internet providers’ on Trustpilot, the results had to be sorted by “Highest number of reviews” and the filters “4.5+ [stars]” and “London” had to be applied. This had the effect of filtering out a large number of Community Fibre’s competitors.
Whilst there were approximately 400 companies in the Trustpilot category “Internet provider”, when these filters were applied only 20 companies appeared. Moreover, when these filters were applied, although Community Fibre appeared at the top of the list of internet providers, another company which appeared beneath them in the list held a higher star rating.
Because the ads gave the impression that Community Fibre was the highest rated internet provider on Trustpilot when we understood that was not the case, we concluded the ads were misleading.
On that point, the ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation).
As usual, the ASA banned the promotions in their current form and told CommunityFibre to “ensure they did not state or imply that they held the number one ranking, or had the most 5-star reviews, on third-party review websites if that was not the case“.