Posted: 17th Sep, 2008 By: MarkJ
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has chosen not to uphold 21 complaints made against a poster, TV and magazine advert for Vodafone's mobile Internet service. The adverts all made heavy usage of "
unlimited" terminology alongside Internet, texts, facebook and e-mail access services.
However the adverts also included a reasonably clear description of Vodafone's Fair Usage Policy (FUP) for the services, which led to the complaints not being upheld:
ASA Conclusion
The ASA noted all the ads made clear that a fair-use policy applied to the service and the level at which the allowance was set. We noted the information provided by Vodafone demonstrated that only a very small proportion of their customers had exceeded the fair-use policy limited and that action was likely to be a request to moderate their usage in the first instance.
We acknowledged that the vast majority of customers used only a small amount of the available allowance and concluded that the existence of a fair-use policy did not contradict the claim "unlimited mobile internet".
The full report can be read here:
http://www.asab.org.uk/asa/adjudications/Public/TF_ADJ_45008.htm