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IoffL new blog post

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  • 08-06-2010 2:48pm
    #1
    IrelandOffline_
    Registered Users Posts: 101 ✭✭


    When is unlimited not unlimited?


    NewSpeak in telecommunications marketing


    When is unlimited not unlimited? When it is offered by an Irish Telco.


    IrelandOffline are today calling for an end to the misleading practice of describing telecommunications packages as unlimited.
    We now have a plethora of “unlimited” offerings by various telcos yet they all have limits. They are now hidden behind a “Fair Use Policy”. These supposedly “unlimited” offerings stretch the use of the English language to the extreme.
    Unlimited by definition means exactly that: unlimited not some falsely crippled offering.
    For instance, Imagine’s Wimax offering is advertised as unlimited yet has a cleverly hidden 30Gbyte cap.
    Then we have Vodafone also advertising an “unlimited” Mobile package. This package does not even offer full access to the internet. Skype and VOIP are not “supported”. While this may mean that Skype and VoIP are not known to work very well on any mobile broadband it may also mean that they are actively blocked which is a completely different situation and most certainly not what is reasonably understood to be “Unlimited”. These are only two examples of this practice.
    Comreg and the ASAI were supposed to address these issues a number of years ago. Why has this not been done? What does the Comreg Consumer Panel actually do?
    This is in clear breach of European Consumer guidelines:
    http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/eyouguide/fiches/4-i-a/index_en.htm
    Here is the text of the directive itself
    http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2005:149:0022:0039:EN:PDF
    whose enforcement is supposed to be monitored by the European Consumer Centre
    http://www.eccireland.ie/


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