Just a week after Optus was forced to pull its advertising due to an ongoing legal stoush with Telstra, Telstra has been faced with a similar fate.
Last week, Optus was forced to pull advertising which spruiked the telco as “The Mobile Network is now best overall nationally” as well as ads which said, “The Optus Mobile Network has been ranked best overall in voice and data”.
Telstra took Optus to court over the advertising, claiming the ads were false.
Now, Telstra has been reprimanded by the Federal Court for its ‘Unlimited’ slogan.
Advertising across out-of-home and social media claimed the telco offered ‘Unlimited’ mobile plans, with ads stating, “One word from Australia’s best mobile network. Unlimited.”
Though, according to the Federal Court’s Justice Jacqueline Gleeson, the mobile plan “does not offer a mobile product or service that is unlimited”.
Adding that the plan’s speed cap “is a significant limit on usage of the services provided under the plan because the plan does not permit a user to download and upload unlimited volumes of data at unrestricted speeds”.
For Gleeson, this meant the advertising, “falsely convey representations to the effect of the unlimited service representations”.
Speaking on the issue, a Telstra spokesperson said, “We will comply with the Federal Court decision, which applies to only a small part of our overall advertising and promotional material for our mobile data plans.
“We will carefully consider the judgment before deciding our next steps.”
Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Optus has said the telco “welcomes the result”.
“Optus took this action because it felt the advertisement was likely to mislead consumers and our actions have been comprehensively vindicated by this judgement,” he added.
