In Olden...

...days, late 90's. We used RACKSHACK for our cloud. We got an allotment of transfer included with the rental, and paid "Per G" for going over.

As time went by, the allocation became larger, and so the cost per GB was lower. The speed was as fast as a 100baseT card (and your server) could pump out.

So we got "Unlimited Speed" for measured data. In terms of having happy hosting customers, it was the best buy for me at the time.

We have since changed data centers and have a smaller amout of bandwidth, but no cap on data transfer.

In both instances, the price was clearly stated, and i chose the best fit for my needs.

As alex hyperbolicly states, your use of the Queen's English in 36 point Helvetica implies a contract that can't be negated in 6 point comic sans. There is nothing "wrong" with a moon landing simulator ride, nor is measured data unreasonable at this early stage of cheap wireless transmission. But in both cases the advertising needs to clearly state the costs and benefits of a particular product.

With the provisioning of 4G, and aggressive pricing by Sprint partner CLEAR, unmeasured data will compete with measured transfer. This will not happen soon, it is happening already. It would be very interesting to see data sales stats in CLEAR cities.

Hopefully, price pressure from 4G will force the greedy carriers (tm) to create more reasonable Per GB pricing for tethering and the new hotspot phones.

Numbnuts!

"Unlimited" means "unlimited", as in without limits. If you then go and add specific limitations then it is no longer *un*limited.

So now just because dumb people can't work with a normal dictionary definition of a word, we arrive at situations such as this.

I hate these pandering dumbasses to the detriment of normal people.

Unlimited?

So if I warranty your car for unlimited mileage but limit it to 1000 miles or one week in the small print you won't complain then? I just happen to have a car for sale. Grin

Or offer you an all you can eat buffet but state in the small print that all you can eat is actually two potatos you won't complain then? I just happen to be opening a resturant. Please pay me a visit.

Or offer you a lifetime warranty on your toaster and define lifetime as one day, you will not be coming back to me after two days?

Or...or...or

The only thing here that us unlimited is the creative marketing speak that can offer you something and actually give you exactly the opposite, and think that is perfectly fine. Have you actually considered that these companys are deliberatly putting in stuff like this and relying on everyone except the most savvy not to understand. It is called Confusion Marketing. Look it up.

You are correct

I mean, they can't continue to use Unlimited* (* = subject to some arbitrary limit in our "fair use policy") but neither can anyone afford to drop this word because all the remaining telco's will continue to offer "Unlimited" packages and therefore look to the casual shopper to provide better packages.

My favourite was my wife's Orange telephone contract:

Unlimited Text Messaging* (* Subject to a maximum of 3000) so why not just say 3000 texts per month, it's not like she is ever going to hit this limit, sorry maximum :-)

In yer example:

They could simply say 'unlimited for private use', thus when they lop ya off when you have called more than 500 diffrent numbers in a month or called more than 24 hours in a day... I presume you can hax the live box to call more than one person at a time, or to conferance call.

the latter would be done though the agreement, ie you will not hax our boxes or curcumvent our products or you be deleted or more simply conferance calls are not allowed. Would fall under the banner 'Unlimited private calls'.

In this way you stay true to your slogan, ie your not lying and at the same time your not opening your self to abuse.

The products that do my head in are were there is bandwith factoring, where they alter your bandwith depending what your doing with it. Screw them you paid for the bandwith at 'upto XXX speed'. And I also think its about time they gave you a garanteed minium speed. (or that they are only allowed to advertise the 'minimum speed'. rather than the max.)

Anyway like most people here I am sure like me they could rant about this stuff for hours, although I would like to think if you stuck most of us in a room we would come out with a nice solid mandate :)

ASA is a waste of space anyway.

So company x get an adjudication and told the ad "should not appear again in its current form".

Big fat hairy deal. The ad run has finished, done its job of conning people and is never going to be shown again anyway.

To be any use the ASA need real powers to fine advertisers or apply other sanctions, particularly for repeat offenders.

T&Cs

I'll have to check my T&C's. I'm on an 'internet & texter) mobile contract at the moment, that is, I get sod all minutes (75 mins) but unlimited texts (actually something like 3,300 which is about 3,200 more than I'd use in a normal month) and 'unlimited' data that was 1GB. I'm going to be a bit cheesed off if they've reduced it to 500MB!

Rob

significantly improved?

I'm glad I didn't know what they used to be like, going off my experience with them in the last week I can only presume they would tell you to F Off as soon as you called them. Now they just flat out lie to you and bounce you around from various departments who they claim to have explained the situation to but clearly haven't.