Lycamobile’s UK Unlimited 4G Mobile Broadband Data Advert Faces Ban

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) looks set to ban an add-on service from Lycamobile, which perhaps misleadingly claimed to offer “UNLIMITED 4G DATA“, after the mobile operator failed to respond to the advertising watchdogs enquiries.

The situation appears to stem from a report in April 2014 (here), which criticised the operator’s new unlimited data 4G plan. Lycamobile’s website doesn’t mention any obvious restrictions for the service and their T&C’s appear to be equally uninformative, although some complained that the service is only “unlimited” for the first 10GB (GigaBytes) and after that your Mobile Broadband speeds would be throttled all the way back to 128Kbps (0.12Mbps).

The situation apparently prompted one of several people to complain about the matter to the ASA, which has now issued a draft recommendation. One of the complainants, whom has been keeping ISPreview.co.uk informed about this process, confirmed that the ASA has preliminarily decided to ban the promotion because Lycamobile “did not respond” to their enquiries and, as a result, failed to provide any evidence to substantiate the “UNLIMITED 4G DATA” claim. This has left the ASA with no option but to conclude that it is “misleading“.

The ASA Council are due to make a final decision on the case by 16th July 2014, although this could be delayed if Lycamobile finally decides to respond after receiving their copy of the draft determination. Sadly it wouldn’t be the first time that Lycamobile has gotten itself into trouble for using misleading “unlimited” claims, a similar complaint was upheld by the ASA last year (here). But in that case the operator did at least mention a 3000MB limit in the small print.