Australian telecom giant Optus pulled up for misleading ads

An Australian federal court judge yesterday upheld a plea by the country's competition and consumer commission's (ACCC) against giant Optus, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Singapore's SingTel and the second largest telecommunications company in Australia.

The ACCC had called an Optus campaign "tricky" for misleading customers over the fine print in its high-speed internet plans.

The ACCC alleged Optus had failed to sufficiently disclose that the service would be "speed limited" to 64 kilobytes per second - too slow for Facebook and Youtube - once users exceeded their peak data allowance.

In his verdict, judge Nye Perram ruled that Optus's television advertisements were "misleading - in my opinion, seriously so. The contravention here is a serious one and the public should be protected from any further repetition of it."

Justice Perram said there was "no hope" that viewers of the TV advertisement would have seen the words 'speed limited if peak data exceeded'."Only by the most astute watching of the advertisement and the frequent use of the pause button was I able to make them out at all," he said.

ACCC chairman Graeme Samuel said on Monday consumers and the ACCC "are, frankly, tired of telcos using complex, confusing and deceptive advertising to fool customers".
Justice Perram ordered that Optus be restrained from engaging in similar conduct for the next three years, and that Optus pay the ACCC's legal costs to date.

An Optus spokeswoman said the company had never intended to mislead its customers.

Penalties against Optus will be announced on Friday.