UK: Traffic Management Makes "Unlimited Service" Limited

UK's Advertising Standards Authority, ASA, ruled recently on a complaint by Sky and BT against an ad by Virgin Media.

The ad claimed that Virgin's service has " ... Unlimited downloads Download and browse as much as you like with no caps and no hidden charges". 

Virgin Media Traffic Management Policies

Sky and BT "challenged whether the "unlimited" claim was misleading, because
they believed that Virgin Media's traffic management policy had a more than moderate impact on those customers who exceeded data thresholds" and it "..misleadingly implied that there were no provider-imposed restrictions on a customer's ability to download data".

Virgin responded that "the claim 'Unlimited downloads Download and browse as much as you like with no caps and no hidden charges' clearly set out what could be expected of the service. They believed that the average consumer's expectation of their "unlimited" service was that they could download as much as they liked, without incurring an additional charge or having their service suspended if they exceeded any usage threshold"

ASA concluded that "the claim 'Unlimited downloads Download and browse as much as you like with no caps and no hidden charges' misleadingly implied that there were no provider-imposed restrictions on a customer's ability to download data".

"The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Virgin Media not to claim that their service was "unlimited" and with "no caps" if they imposed restrictions that were more than moderate".

See "ASA Adjudication on Virgin Media Ltd" - here.