SingTel’s Australian telco Optus in hot soup over broadband ad

Australian telco Singtel-Optus is facing trouble over a series of advertisement which the government finds deceiving under the Trade Practices Act. The ad as shown above advertises 150GB of broadband for $59.99 which is split for 75GB for off peak and another 75GB for on peak usage. Sure enough there will be throttling involved like any other telco however the tricky part is that your entire broadband is throttled once your 75GB of on peak usage is used up.

As a normal consumer, you probably expect off-peak and on-peak quotas to be treated separately. However with this unique throttling policy, your entire 75GB off peak quota is simply burned out once on-peak is depleted. To make matters worse, the throttle speed is a pathetic 64kbps download, making it unusable for rich media websites. The main issue here is that consumers will not get to fully enjoy 150GB as claimed and the telco could be facing a fine up to A$1.1 million.

This is something for our local telcos to take note when it comes to advertising. By the way, did you notice Optus uses ‘yes’ on their brand? We wonder if YTL got their yes branding inspiration from them.

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