Australian Consumer Watchdog Sues Apple Over iPad Marketing

Fluffeh writes "Australia's competition regulator will today take iconic technology giant Apple to court for advertising its new iPad tablet as featuring '4G' speeds — which are not supported on Australian telecommunications networks. One of the key features of the new iPad is support for 4G speeds, however, the 4G speeds which the new iPad supports will not be available in Australia, with Apple's technical specifications page only listing it as supporting the 700Mhz and 2100Mhz spectrum bands, neither of which are being used by Australian telcos to provide 4G services. The case may be a bit shaky, though, as Apple does state in the fine print: '4G LTE is supported only on AT&T and Verizon networks in the US; and on Bell, Rogers and Telus networks in Canada. Data plans sold separately. See your carrier for details.'"

Comments

Re:Silly

[PigIronBob]

The Crux of the matter here is that 4G is available in Australia, Apple just can't be bothered making the iPad compatible with the Australian Network, yet advertises as if it were, that is false advertising in anyones book.

Re:Does fine print supercede large print?

[robbak]

The Australian courts have answered this many times: It does not. Fine print does not even trump customers logical expectations.

The only thing that may save Apple is that the boxes have quite a large sticker on the back that states that the 4G capability is not compatible with any Australian network. Assuming that Apple has not advertised 4G in any Australian-targeted advertising, they should be OK.

If they have, then fines and forced offers of refunds will be in their future.

Re:IMHO Apple is becoming a scummy advertiser

[unreadepitaph]

Let's have a look at 4G around around the world shall we?
http://www.worldtimezone.com/gsm.html
Oh look! It would appear that THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLD uses the 900/1800 GSM band.

Apple intentionally mislead consumers, and they were warned prior to the iPads release by the ACCC that what they were doing was in breach of advertising laws.
I've spoken to many CEO's (I work helpdesk for a private hospitals) who wanted to order the iPad and when I told them it wasn't 4G compatible in Australia they were all shocked to hear it. I would assume this is the same with many other consumers as well.

Re:IMHO Apple is becoming a scummy advertiser

[Whiney Mac Fanboy]

which operates on a different spectrum than the 4G networks used everywhere else in the world

WTF are you talking about? The LTE ipad uses 700, 2100 MHz bands, and according to Wikipedia's 3GPP LTE page:

The LTE standard can be used with many different frequency bands. In North America, 700/ 800 and 1700/ 1900 MHz are planned to be used; 800, 1800, 2600 MHz in Europe; 1800 and 2600 MHz in Asia; and 1800 MHz in Australia.

The US & Canada are the only countries in the world with LTE networks fully compatable with the ipad.

US !=The rest of the world.

Re:Does fine print supercede large print?

[whoever57]

Assuming that Apple has not advertised 4G in any Australian-targeted advertising, they should be OK.

Read this page and then note the "au" in the URL, not also the prices in Austalian dollars. It is clearly targeted to Australia and it highlights 4G capability.