With the news that a lawsuit has been filed against T-Mobile for advertising "unlimited" smartphone data service that's really limited to 10GB, it raises an important question: how come we don't see more lawsuits like this? For years we've pointed out that all these services marketing offerings as "unlimited" when they're really limited certainly must be violating truth in advertising laws -- but for some reason, you almost never hear of any actual lawsuits against these companies. Now, it's probably difficult to show that the difference caused much harm, but you would think that, at the very least, the FTC would step in at some point to point out that calling a limited service "unlimited," is not allowed.

We've seen how broadband providers and mobile carriers have regularly been confused by the term unlimited, and now it appears that the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) is going down the same road. To deal with its budget crunch the MTA is planning to say that its unlimited ride cards are actually quite limited. A monthly "unlimited" card will get you 90 rides. A weekly one will get you 21 rides. Basically, "unlimited" means 3 rides per day. As someone who spends a lot of time in NY, and frequently gets unlimited weekly cards, I know I use it more than 21 times in a week, especially when I'm bouncing around from meeting to meeting during a day. The MTA might want to be careful, of course. Companies have been fined for falsely stating unlimited when things are not actually unlimited.

And I thought the days of companies claiming "unlimited" data plans when they really were very very limited had died out after Verizon Wireless got fined and started backing away from claiming "unlimited" data for plans that were actually quite limited. However, with Walmart teaming up with TracFone to offer the misleadingly-named "Straight Talk" mobile phone service, some are noticing the return of very limited mobile data offers advertised as "unlimited." As is pointed out in that link, beyond simply being flat-out wrong and more than a bit deceiving, it's pretty ridiculous for a brand called "Straight Talk" to lie in its advertising, and hide the details in the very very fine print.

After plenty of complaints (and whispers about potential legal troubles) a lot of US wireless carriers have backed off from calling very, very limited data plans "unlimited." Apparently, the discount wireless provider Cricket wasn't informed that when you say unlimited, you actually are supposed to mean unlimited. lavi d writes in to point us to Cricket's highly publicized "Unlimited" data plan. You see, right there at the top, it even highlights in orange that it's UNLIMITED. It's only after you go through all the fine print and get almost to the bottom that you see this:

Throughput may be limited if use exceeds 5GB per month. Internet browsing does not include: hosted computer applications, continuous web camera or broadcast, automatic data feeds, machine-to-machine connections, peer to peer (P2P) connections or other applications that denigrate network capacity or functionality.

I don't want to be too presumptuous about the definition of "unlimited" but when you say quite clearly that the plan "may be limited," one would have to think that you're outright lying when you call it unlimited. Whatever happened to truth in advertising?

For the last few years, various connectivity providers sold "unlimited" data plans when the reality was the plans weren't unlimited at all. Many providers are now changing the plans and instituting more clear caps, but it still seems a bit ridiculous to have marketed unlimited data plans and then pulled the rug out from under those who bought exactly what you sold them. Up in Canada, it seems that TELUS is taking it a step further. Not only did it sell people "unlimited" plans that it now regrets, it's exercising some vague language in its contract that allows them to simply cancel the plans of those who had bought into the "unlimited" plan even just a short while ago. The company is forcing users to switch from a $75 unlimited plan to a $65 plan that is limited to just one GB per month, and dumping anyone who won't switch. That would seem to be a pretty strong bait-and-switch claim. Sure, perhaps the telcos oversold these unlimited plans, but that doesn't mean they shouldn't be required to live up to what they sold.

Back in 2005, we noted that Verizon Wireless was following the tactics of others in advertising "unlimited" wireless broadband services, while the truth was they were quite limited. As people later worked out, despite the claim of "unlimited," VZW was cutting off anyone who used more than 5 gigs of data per month. That's pretty limited, actually. When confronted about this, the company tried to argue that by "unlimited" it really meant "It's unlimited amounts of data for certain types of data." And they followed it up with this gem: "It's very clear in all the legal materials we put out." Right, see, that's the legal materials -- the stuff you know no one reads. Yet in the marketing materials it's quite clear that you're claiming "unlimited" and that has a pretty clear meaning. After many such complaints, Verizon Wireless finally started to back down from the false claim of "unlimited" earlier this year. Turns out that it wasn't because of any realization that lying to your customers is a bad idea, but because NY State was investigating the practice. NY has now fined Verizon Wirelss $1 million to be given out to customers who had their service unfairly terminated for actually believing that "unlimited" meant "unlimited." Of course, Comcast might want to start paying attention right about now. While lawyers everywhere are rushing to file lawsuits over its decision to jam broadband user accounts, before that happened Comcast was famous for many, many years for being one of the biggest ISPs to lie about offering unlimited service. It's a story that comes up in the press every year or so, and every year Comcast gives its own doublespeak about how it only cuts off the worst "abusers." However, it's still false advertising to claim unlimited service when that's not what you supply -- and it's hardly "abuse" if people are merely doing what you told them they could do.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with a connectivity provider limiting how people use their connectivity -- as long as it's clearly laid out in how they pitch the service. Unfortunately, too many of these services advertise "unlimited" service, but mean the exact opposite. In the US, Verizon Wireless used to do this. When confronted on it, they tried to doubletalk their way around the issue, claiming that it was "unlimited data for limited types of data" (read that phrase a few times). However, eventually, Verizon Wireless realized how ridiculous this was and started to back off the claims of unlimited data. Unfortunately, that sort of thinking hasn't reached the folks at Bell Canada, who are apparently advertising an unlimited service, while hiding an awful lot of "limits" within the terms of service. Again, there's nothing wrong with them deciding they need to limit the service -- but if they're going to do so, they shouldn't be advertising it as unlimited. It's amazing that no one's been charged with false advertising for these types of misleading ads.