Optus has been slammed in the Federal Court over its Think Bigger and Supersonic broadband packages, with a judge ruling its advertising was “inherently deceptive”.
The company has responded to the case, saying it never intended to mislead customers and that it will correct the advertising in question.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took Optus to task in September over the two broadband packages, saying Optus did not disclose to customers that while download quotas were offered at 120, 150 and 170 gigabytes, they could only be reached by dividing download times into “peak” and “off peak” periods.
“‘The difficulty with what Optus has done is not that it has misrepresented the standard, quality, value or grade of what it provides,’” Justice Nye Perram said in court yesterday.
“Rather, it is the more serious default in misrepresenting the quantity of what is was providing… Customers were not being sold plans which gave them the nominated amount of broadband.”
Telcos often divide downloads into peak and off-peak periods, which take up roughly half the day each, with off-peak usually being overnight. However, as Justice Perram points out, when users exceed the download quota of either peak or off-peak periods, downloads during that time are ‘shaped’ to frustratingly slow speeds.
This means users may have to endure slow speeds in the middle of the day, even though they may have dozens of gigabytes left to download on their plan.
“They were given plans which had that amount as the maximum usage which could be obtained and, even then, only by careful use,” he said.
“I have given consideration to the fact that the experience of an internet user is such that he is more likely to be paying attention to the screen than would the casual observer of a television commercial or newspaper advertisement. However, I do not think this assists,” Perram said.
Justice Perram granted injunctions sought by the ACCC, but disagreed that Optus failed to inform customers that it would slow their download speeds, and that Optus did not disclose that 64 kilobits a second was not classified as a broadband speed.
An Optus spokesperson says it was the company’s intention to “provide our customers with the best products and services”.
“It is never our intention to mislead our customers and we have corrected the advertising in question to make it clearer. We will continue to work with our customers to ensure they are completely satisfied with Optus.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
