Tag Archives: NAD

What Does Unlimited Mean?

It’s always entertaining and informative when the big ISPs fight with each other. One recent battle comes from Verizon filing a complaint with the National Advertising Division (NAD) of the Better Business Bureau.

Verizon complained about Charter advertising that touted its cellular service as unlimited. Charter has been marketing both an Unlimited and Unlimited Plus cellular plan, and the advertisement for these plans implies that customers can use as much voice, data and texts as they want. The very name Unlimited implies to the average customer that there is no cap on usage.

As you would expect, this isn’t exactly true, and none of the cellular carriers, including Verizon, has a truly unlimited cellular data plan. In Charter’s case, data speeds are severely restricted once a customer reaches a monthly cap. There are also other limitations on data usage, such as the amount that can be used for tethering during a month.

The dispute went to NAD since the big carriers have all agreed to use NAD as the arbiter of disputes about advertising claims. This saves the carriers from taking each other to court, and the carriers all accept decisions made by NAD.

Interestingly, NAD decided that the Charter plans are unlimited since customers never get cut off entirely from using data. However, NAD asked Charter to fix its advertising to disclose that there are limitations placed on data usage after reaching a cap.

This particular tussle between Verizon and Charter is typical of the disputes that have been forwarded to NAD over the years. The telcos and cable companies keep a close watch on each other, and complaints are lodged when a carrier makes exaggerated marketing claims.

I predict we’ll see an uptick in advertising disputes as carriers react to being freed from regulation. The FCC clearly no longer regulates broadband as a result of the Sixth Circuit ruling that killed Title II regulation. My guess is this will embolden ISPs and cellular carriers to push the envelope in their advertising to the public.

There are some regulations that will stay on the books. For example, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act created broadband labels, and the FCC can’t kill that requirement without action from Congress. But most ISPs have already buried these where customers can’t easily find them.

Cable Company Speed Claims

I don’t know if it’s just me, but my perception of ISP and cellular advertising is that the big ISPs and cellular carriers push the envelope more every year in trying to make claims that can give them a marketing edge over the competition.

The advertising for 5G cellular has repeatedly made claims over the years that are far in excess of the ability of the technology to deliver. If your only view of the state of broadband technology is ads seen on TV during sporting events, you would be fully convinced that we live in a completely wireless world and that 5G is the end-all-and-be-all of the broadband world.

What’s funny about many ads is that carriers try to differentiate themselves from their competitors, even though their peers are delivering essentially the same product to the market. There is not much difference in the cellular technology being delivered by AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon – although ads claim that each is by far the superior company. In real life, the biggest differentiator between the three carriers is the strength of their signal at your home, office, and other places you frequent – a strictly local difference based on the location of cell towers.

The competition between cable companies and fiber overbuilders is not based on equivalence. There is a clear technical advantage of a 300 Mbps broadband connection on fiber versus the same connection on a cable company. Fiber has a steadier signal throughout the day with lower latency and jitter, and any consumer comparing the two can quickly spot the difference. This puts cable companies in a tough spot. They know that fiber ISPs have a quality advantage for downloading and a huge advantage for upload speeds. Fiber networks tend to also have fewer glitches and outages.

Cable companies know when a fiber network shows up in a market that they will lose customers who care about signal quality. Since cable company prices are normally higher than the prices of fiber ISPs, the cable companies have to scramble and lower prices drastically with special prices to try to hang on to customers and lure new ones.

But cable company marketers never stop trying to make a pitch that makes them sound better than fiber. One of the latest examples comes from Comcast, which has started to advertise itself as the 10G ISP. The company now refers to its broadband network as the ‘Xfinity 10G Network’. This is based on the CableLabs 10G standard that lays out a future upgrade path for cable companies to eventually achieve an overall speed as fast as 10 Gbps download and 6 Mbps upload.

Verizon took exception to Comcast’s advertising and asked the National Advertising Division (NAD) of BBB National Programs to get Comcast to stop using the term 10G. The NAD program is something that many of the big ISPs voluntarily participate in to avoid expensive lawsuits between each other over advertising claims. NAD ruled that the 10G term was not factual and said Comcast should stop using it. The participants in the NAD generally comply with NAD rulings, but this time, Comcast is appealing the ruling. An interesting sidebar of the NAD ruling is that it also felt that consumers would interpret 10G as some advanced version of cellular 5G.

As an outsider, it’s pretty easy to agree with Verizon in this case. The 10G term was based on some theoretical future upgrade to meet the CableLabs 10G specifications, and Comcast’s coaxial networks today cannot achieve that speed. The only example of where Comcast has a 10 Gbps capability today is where it has upgraded to a 10 Gbps fiber platform – a tiny portion of the overall Comcast network. Comcast’s advertising implies to consumers that the future upgrades are already in place.

In a similar dispute, AT&T took exception to Cox ads that claim that Cox cable broadband is ‘powered by fiber’. NAD agreed with AT&T and ruled that Cox could not imply in advertising that its coaxial network is fiber-to-the-home. Again, it’s easy to agree with NAD on this ruling. Having fiber somewhere in a network does not mean that the network can deliver the same quality of broadband as an all-fiber network. Many DSL fiber nodes are fed with fiber, and I don’t recall any telcos making the claim that their DSL is “powered by fiber”.

More aggressive cable marketing is inevitable in a market where cable companies have stopped growing. There has to be a lot of angst in cable company board rooms about finding ways for the companies to claim fast broadband speeds and stop losing customers.