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Q2. When unlimited broadband isn’t…
By johne | January 15, 2009
If, like me, you have thought about using your mobile phone to access the web or your email, or of changing to a mobile phone provider for your broadband, then you will probably be aware that the whole area is a minefield.
There are deals on offer from every company, all trying to either lure you in or get you to upgrade. But the most insidious of all is the "unlimited usage" tag applied to so many of them now…
The small print invariably says something like "fair usage policy applies" and then leaves you hanging, with no idea what the fair usage policy is, where it is, or what it stipulates.
And in some cases it’s downright diabolical. A recent national press campaign from e2save, an offshoot of Carphone Warehouse, offered "unlimited data" with a contract for a BlackBerry 9000 Bold. They took their information from network provider Orange, but investigation of the small print showed that the "fair usage policy" limited the user to 250mb of data transfer monthly.
Now this is where it gets really interesting…. by the time I’ve read that I’m mentally shouting "complain", "sue them", "report them to the Advertising Standards Authority"…. and thinking "I’ll do it - I’ll teach them to con people out of their money", and then I discover that they have already been reported to the ASA, who have said that it’s ok, and they can carry on promoting it as "unlimited".
How does that happen? How can they explain such a clear contradiction? How do they work it out to justify the validity of the ridiculous tag "unlimited"?
I shall tell you. It seems that to the ASA the word "unlimited" does not mean unlimited at all. It means above an average users usage.
e2save quoted statistical data from Orange which showed that "250MB monthly usage limit was far in excess of the amount of data that an average customer would use".
Additionally it was apparently claimed that 1mb of mobile data would allow for the transfer of "160 WAP pages, 100 short emails, four video clips or three music tracks".
Who on earth calculated that? A chimpanzee sitting on the beach, whilst trying to write out the bible on a coconut at the same time?
My mp3’s, such as they are, average 3-5mb each - so 25 of them would knock up about 100mb. Video clips - well they can easily run to a lot more than that, whilst You Tube shorties might only be 1-3 mb total, approx 2mb per min is nearer the mark, so ten 5 minuters would run you another 100mb. And whilst it’s true that text emails are quite small, attach something to one and distribute it to a few people and they’re anything but. Browse a few web pages along the way (the Blackberry Bold has full browsing built in) and you can see that this is a limit that could easily be blitzed.
The ASA appears to have completely overlooked two important factors;
1) That most users are so frightened of going over their limits that they use their phones with extreme caution and ensure that they use a minimum of transfer
2) That a somewhat more expensive "unlimited" contract is likely to be taken up by someone who wishes to have the freedom to transfer more data without worrying.
These factors mean that any talk of an average user is nonsensical.
And last but by no means least - there should not even have to be any discussion about average users and data transfer quotas - when it says "unlimited" it should be "unlimited".
Topics: General |
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