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A ruling from the UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) raises an issue that will carry far wider significance for any operator round the world that is relying on offering mobile broadband services and luring users away from their fixed lines.

The ASA has criticized T-Mobile UK for an advertising flyer that claims mobile broadband is interchangeable with its fixed line 'home' equivalent. The ASA agreed with customer complaints that the HSPA link would not deliver the same speed and quality as wireline broadband, despite the wording of the mailer: "All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries".

T-Mobile argued that the leaflet referred to the capacities of mobile broadband, not its speed and "maintained that they did not make any claim that implied a direct technical comparison to fixed line broadband". But the details of the semantics are not the important aspect of this localized debate, but the broader debate over whether HSPA and other wireless technologies really are ready to support full quality fixed/mobile broadband - if so, delivering huge business opportunities for wireless only carriers like 3, which is busily repositioning itself as primarily a broadband rather than mobile supplier.

Under the ASA's ruling, T-Mobile can't run the same ad in the future and must "avoid the implication that their mobile broadband service was of a comparable standard to fixed line broadband".

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