“Free” and “Unlimited”
These two words are the most abused terms in broadband advertising. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) did publish an critical adjudication against Carphone Warehouse using “free forever” in its TalkTalk advertising, but there is still a lot of marketing material which is open to misunderstanding by naive consumers in particular as to the nature of the costs and limits of a particular product or service.
Let me be clear about this – There is no such thing as “free” or “unlimited” anything which doesn’t at the very least rely on the law of averages. Any company using these terms is relying on income from something which helps make particular options or features available at no additional cost. Usually they are suffixed by an asterisk or other reference to a footnote detailing the terms, or worse, text such as “Terms and conditions apply. See website for details”.
So why am I so wound up about this? – I view using these terms as being dishonest.. Let’s look at the word “unlimited” for a second. It means “without limit”. Therefore by definition “unlimited internet” means “internet without limits”. Now I can understand that it is not possible to run a service which is not contended (and thus limited in some way) but my issue is where the small print includes concepts such as a ‘Fair Usage Policy’ (which comes under various names including Acceptable Use Policy, Sustainable Usage Policy, etc.)
These policies effectively place limited on what is and is not acceptable, thereby rendering the product no longer unlimited. The honest service providers call these services ‘unmetered’. I am not suggesting that all products should employ charging by usage, but if they have limits in the form of FUP/SUPs, they should be clearly labelled as such. ‘Unmetered’ is understood to mean you won’t get a meter reading each month on how much you’ve used.
Recently, several broadband service providers have started offering ‘free broadband’. This is another term I taker issue with–It’s not really free.. you have to subscribe to some other service to qualify so in reality there is a cost. This is slightly less of an issue as it can be argued the broadband is free whether you take it or not, however I am quite concerned many users do not see past the headline when choosing a provider.