ASA Adjudication on T-Mobile (UK) Ltd

Ad

A leaflet for T-Mobile stated "Emails to send, blogs to write, games to play, stuff-to buy- and everything else you love doing online- wish you could do these things when you're out and about with friends and family in the UK this summer? Broadband on the go for £15 a month … All the benefits of home broadband, on the move. No wires, no waiting, no worries..."

Issue

The complainant objected that the ad misleadingly implied mobile broadband was of similar speed and quality to home broadband.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

T-Mobile (UK) Ltd (T-Mobile) said the claim "All the benefits of home broadband, on the move" was intended to focus on the capabilities of their mobile broadband product. They said the ad included a short list of things that their research had shown that customers used the internet in general to do, i.e. send e-mails, write blogs, play games and buy products. T-Mobile maintained that they did not make any claim that implied a direct technical comparison to fixed-line broadband.  They pointed out that they referred only to mobile broadband speed and not the speed of home broadband or broadband in general.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted mobile broadband services allowed high speed internet access through a USB device, which was normally used in conjunction with a laptop computer.  We understood the technology allowed wireless internet access utilising mobile phone networks to transfer data, as opposed to fixed-line broadband, which was based on either DSL or cable and provided directly to the user's home.  We understood that the activities and services available to mobile broadband customers were ostensibly the same as those available to fixed-line broadband users, in that both services allowed access to the internet and various forms of data transfer.  However, we also understood that there were notable differences between the two types of service.

We understood that mobile broadband was unlikely to offer speeds comparable with those of a high speed fixed-line service and that, due to the technology's reliance on obtaining a signal from mobile telephone networks it could not guarantee the same continuity of service.  We considered that that resulted in users being unable to fully utilise mobile broadband for more bandwidth and speed-intensive activities. In particular, we were concerned that activities such as streaming, downloading and online gaming were unlikely to be available to mobile broadband users to the same standard as to fixed-line broadband users.

Although we noted T-Mobile's intention was to highlight how mobile broadband could be used for the same functions as fixed-line broadband,  we considered that the claim "All the benefits of home broadband" was likely to lead readers to assume the level of service, including the speed, would be the same.  Because T-Mobile had not made clear in the ad that there were differences between home broadband services and mobile broadband services, particularly in terms of the potentially higher speeds of the former, and because we considered that that was likely to influence consumers' decision to subscribe to the service, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 19.1 (Other comparisons).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form.  We told T-Mobile to avoid the implication that their mobile broadband service was of a comparable standard to fixed line broadband.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)