Tag: NARB

Gavel

NARB Ruling On Mint’s “Unlimited” Plan

Christian

It’s almost old news at this point, but last month a self-regulatory body for the advertising industry came out with a ruling against Mint Mobile’s marketing around its “unlimited” plans:

The National Advertising Review Board (NARB), the appellate advertising law body of BBB National Programs, has recommended that Mint Mobile LLC discontinue the use of “UNLIMITED” and “UNLTD” headlines in its advertising or modify them to clearly communicate that its plan does not offer unlimited high-speed data.

Mint’s allegedly “unlimited” plan caps subscribers at 35GB of regular-speed data each month. Subscribers that exceed the 35GB threshold can continue to use data, but they’re throttled to speeds of 128kbps. As I’ve written about before, 128kbps is a sluggish speed that can’t support a lot of common activities.

The recent ruling is unsurprising. The same self-regulatory body ruled against Boost Mobile for a nearly equivalent offense in early 2021. That said, there are two aspects of this story worth highlighting:

  1. AT&T initiated the complaint against Mint. Plenty of carriers offer unlimited plans with similar throttling policies, but it looks like AT&T saw Mint as a particularly threatening competitor.
  2. While Mint has committed to changing its advertisements, I haven’t seen any indication that the carrier will stop calling its 35GB plan an “unlimited” plan. The National Advertising Review Board and the associated National Advertising Division are toothless in some areas of consumer protection.

AT&T Drops 5GE Ads & Keeps 5GE Icon

Christian

For a while now, AT&T has been misleadingly labeling some of its 4G services as “5GE.”

A self-regulatory body in the advertising industry recently concluded that AT&T should stop mentioning 5GE in advertisements:

A panel of the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) has recommended that AT&T Services, Inc. discontinue its ‘5G Evolution’ and ‘5G Evolution, The First Step to 5G’ claims…the NARB panel determined that both claims will mislead reasonable consumers into believing that AT&T is offering a 5G network and recommended that the claims be discontinued.

AT&T agreed to cease advertising 5GE, but the carrier will continue to show the 5GE icon on phones. As a result, AT&T has been receiving well-deserved scorn from journalists.

AT&T’s actions aren’t surprising. I don’t think the National Advertising Review Board has much power to change business practices outside of advertising. Further, AT&T has tricked some subscribers into thinking their 5GE connections are actual 5G connections. If AT&T stopped showing the 5GE icon, the carrier would have to deal with complaints from frustrated customers thinking they lost 5G access.