A television ad touting the speed of Apple’s 3G iPhone has been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading consumers, the second time this has happened here. It’s easy to see from the commercial itself, created by ad agency TBWA/London, why the watchdog ruled against Apple (NSDQ: AAPL). The ad, which received 17 complaints, shows a close up of the iPhone as a person zips from the Times web site, to Google (NSDQ: GOOG) maps, to downloading an email. All of the actions are completed in “a fraction of a second,” as the ASA notes, or “really fast” as the ad itself says.

Apple UK defended the ad by calling their claims “relative rather than absolute in nature,” noting that they had “clearly positioned the content of the ad as a comparison of the new 3G iPhone with its 2G predecessor.” Apple also added that “the average viewer was a mobile phone user and would have understood that a device’s performance varied due to several factors.” Plus, they included the disclaimer “network performance will vary by location,” which the company said underlined the potential for performance variations.