T-Mobile and its Full Monty service told off over unlimited claims

The T-Mobile Full Monty tariff is enjoyed by many heavy mobile broadband
users, who have absorbed the lifestyle advertising that says you can do things
like watch films and stream music all the time using mobile broadband, even if
it is on the older 3G and its numerous faster variants.

Unfortunately for T-Mobile someone has complained about the £36 per month
unlimited Full Monty plan because they felt it was not unlimited and a traffic
management policy applied. The ASA adjudication gives a lot of detail about the actual
traffic management policy T-Mobile use, which while mentioned in the products
terms and conditions does not go into the same level of detail as listed on the
ASA website.

“Our Full Monty plans will give you unlimited use of our internet on your
phone service when you’re in the UK. This means you can use as many MB/GB as
you like and no fair use policy will apply. Please note, internet on your phone
excludes using your phone as a modem (tethering) and network traffic controls
apply.”

Extract from T-Mobile Full Monty terms and conditions

The actual traffic management policy centres around four core elements:

1. Only authenticated SMTP (e-mail sending) access is allowed
2. Peer to peer activities are throttled between 8am and 2am every day
3. Download speeds are limited to 4 Mbps, irrespective of level of 3G
   signal
4. Upload speeds are limited to 1 Mbps

The capping of speeds at 4 Mbps, when the network can in theory reach speeds
of 21 Mbps may surprise some, but has been known about on forums discussing the
Full Monty service for some time, though is not mentioned in the terms and
conditions. The ASA ruling suggests that 4 Mbps was chosen because research has
shown the average speed for customers (on all products) was 3 Mbps, and that
T-Mobile believe 3 Mbps was enough to stream video from YouTube in HD.

“In relation to download and upload speeds, we understood that the setting
of maximum speeds of 4Mbit/s for downloads and 1Mbit/s for uploads applied to
all customers on the Full Monty plan and therefore were not restrictions to
particular individual users or indeed restrictions targeted at particular
activities or types of content. They were, in effect, the maximum upstream and
downstream speeds of the service. Consequently, we considered that these
restrictions were not relevant to the consideration of whether the service
could be described as “unlimited”. We further noted that there were no
references to specific speeds for the service and consumers were therefore
unlikely to have expectations that they would be able to achieve speeds in
excess of 4Mbit/s for downloads and 1Mbit/s for uploads that would render the
maximum upstream and downstream speeds as being immoderate restrictions.

…

Furthermore, although we noted the service provided was to a mobile handset,
which consumers were likely to use differently to, for instance, a fixed line
service, we considered that the ad’s inclusion of tethering within the terms of
the service was likely to lead consumers to expect that they could engage in
more bandwidth-intensive activities, such as peer-to-peer activity, using the
mobile device in conjunction with a computer. As they had not provided evidence
to show that the restriction was moderate and in line with consumers’
reasonable expectations of an “unlimited” service we considered the claim was
misleading.”

Extract from ASA ruling

It will be interesting to see what changes now happen to the Full Monty
product and its advertising, so that future advertising does not full foul of
the moderate restrictions are allowed on an unlimited service.

One small aspect that shows how far mobile data use has to go to match fixed
line services is that with the Full Monty plan apparently the average customer
used just 1GB of data a month (fixed line average is 23GB per month). With
cheaper lower Internet allowance packages available, one wonders why people
don’t downgrade, but speak to anyone who has ever had to pay excess usage
charges on a mobile data service and you will know why people would much rather
have a fixed cost product.