Telkom wins ASA ruling
In this advert Telkom punts their ADSL service as being suitable for high downloads, online gaming and standard activities like online shopping and online banking.
ASA received nineteen complaints regarding this advertisement, stating that there are restrictions on the service which hampers the simultaneous use of all of these services at once.
The complaints also suggested that the advertised ADSL usage is considered abuse by Telkom and that ADSL lines slower than 512 Kbps are not capable of supporting the advertised activities.
ASA requested an opinion from ICASA on the matter and also considered Telkom’s input on the matter.
Telkom’s response was that they have made a four gigabyte unshaped service available which supports video streaming and gaming. They also stated that in an uncapped environment it can offer the depicted usage for a significant portion of the month.
Telkom further pointed out that capping is a contractual issue between the consumer and their ISP, and that they do not control this part.
After considering this information the ASA ruled that the advertisement is not misleading and the complaints were hence dismissed.
The ASA ruling on the ‘Download Life’ advertisement is still outstanding, and it will be interesting to follow the arguments regarding this case.
Here Telkom explicitly give the price for their shaped and capped ADSL options, and stated clearly that this service is suitable for online gaming, large downloads and other related activities.
This is in direct conflict with Telkom’s ICASA submission which states that a “…minority of people who abuse the service and use it for purposes that it [ADSL] was not developed for, for example gaming.”
Telkom further points out that “Telkom’s ADSL service was never intended for bandwidth hungry applications, such as gaming or online trading” and that “for customers with bandwidth intensive communication needs (e.g. such as peer-to-peer applications), these access mediums [ADSL] would not be sufficient and other products, for example Telkom’s Diginet products, would be more appropriate.”
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