Communications giant Orange has been pulled up by the Advertising Standards Agency over its claims that its downloads and phone calls are unlimited when both services are actually limited. Orange recently advertised a deal where both downloads and phone calls were meant to be unlimited. However, it turned out that downloads were capped at various levels based on the capacity of the network and phone calls were also limited to one thousand minutes per month. According to the Advertising Standards Agency the code of advertising had been breached as a result of this.

According to officials from the Advertising Standards Agency the broadband and communications giant should have included details of its fair usage policy in its adverts, and failure t do this meant that the advertising code had been breached. One spokesman from the agency stated: ‘We concluded that, because it did not include a reference to Orange’s fair usage policies for both the Talk service and the unlimited downloads, the ad was misleading.’

According to officials from Orange the fair usage details had been left out of its advertising campaign due to error resulting from production problems. Officials from orange also added that based on its March figures over one percent of customers had exceeded the download limits and nearly two percent had exceeded the fair usage level when it comes to making calls. The UK’s IS trade association has recently highlighted the importance of making fair usage policies clearer to Internet Service Providers.

Another reason why Orange has come under fire recently is over the call charges applied to customers that contact the company with regards to their broadband connection. National rates are charged on calls to its customer service team but for those experiencing broadband problems requiring more technical advice calls are charged at fifty pence per minute – although national rate is still charged to those on the higher priced unlimited package with Orange.

A similar announcement has been made by Virgin Media with regards to callers that need technical assistance with their broadband. Callers that were previously put through to the technical team via the free phone number in order to discuss broadband issues will now have to dial a separate number where calls are charged at twenty five pence per minute along with a ten pence connection fee