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Thursday, July 10, 2014

ASA says Three UK 'free 0800 calls' advertising wasn't clear enough

The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority has ruled that a TV advertisement for Three didn’t explain the network’s free calls policy clearly enough.

A voice on the TV ad said “At Three, we’ve made 0800 numbers free” and “All 0800 numbers are free on our 24 month plans”. However, an on-screen message added “All 0800 calls free on new Three plans.”

A total of eleven people challenged the claim “we’ve made 0800 numbers free” because this only applied to new customers or new 24-month contracts.

Hutchison 3G UK, which runs the Three network, said the text was displayed in a large font as the first on-screen message, making it unambiguous.

The ASA disagreed, describing the ad’s contents as “three differing messages”. It described the ad as containing “ambiguous and contradictory messages which did not make clear the extent of the commitment consumers must make”.

As a result, it ruled that the ad breached rules on misleading advertising, qualification and ‘free’ claims.

From the end of June next year, all UK mobile phone networks will be required to provide free calls to numbers beginning 080.

[ASA adjudication]

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Opinion Articles

The end of unlimited* mobile data has almost arrived

Mark Bridge writes:

Unlimited mobile data. Once upon a time, it seemed that everyone offered it. Not that mobile data was ever really unlimited – there tended to be a ‘fair usage’ clause tucked away in the terms and conditions – but the word ‘unlimited’ was used a lot. The fact that it was always accompanied by an asterisk didn’t seem to trouble trading standards departments.

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You can't stop the news when it goes mobile (part 2)

Mark Bridge writes:

Last month I was struck by the way video streaming service Bambuser was being used by citizen journalists.

Now comes news of a different kind of photo-journalism. Instead of shooting behind-the-scenes images of a general election, prisoner Michael Long has been using his mobile to record from behind bars.

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A radial menu for iPhone 5? It's not such a radical idea

Mark Bridge writes:

As sure as eggs, there’ll be an iPhone 5. It’ll be announced on 6th June 2011 if you want my guess. And the latest rumours are suggesting it’ll have ‘radial menus’.

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Apps World: Screach, Sony Ericsson and the Wholesale Applications Community

This week’s edition of The Fonecast includes a report from Apps World, which took place in London on 30th November and 1st December. As the name suggests, the event was all about mobile applications, their development, the technology that’s used and the ways that apps are marketed.

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Is Microsoft about to back down from locking Windows Mobile 7 users into its Marketplace app store?

Mark Bridge writes:

In this week’s podcast we talked about the ChevronWP7 ‘unlocking’ solution that allowed the installation of Windows Phone 7 applications without the need to use Microsoft’s Marketplace application store. Unlike previous Windows Mobile handsets, new WP7 devices can only add applications that are offered via the Microsoft Marketplace.

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