This is priceless: Bharti Airtel, in its submission last year, to the Indian Telecom regulator TRAI on issues relating to misleading advertisements (specifically, including the unfair "Fair Usage Policy"), has inferred that the meaning of 'Unlimited' needs to be looked at from the perspective of the conditions imposed, and "the limits set out by most service providers is implicitly unlimited since the capping on usage is done at a very high level." Erm... someone tell Airtel that "Unlimited" refers to an absolute, and there is no implicit definition of the word, unless they want to write their own dictionary. It's quite simple - if you're putting caps on your broadband plans, then don't advertise them as unlimited. In our opinion, this is just the beginning: we'll see more of this with 3G mobile broadband plans, and if Airtel Broadband intends to not remain a dumb pipe, then net neutrality (via preferential bandwidth allocation, lower latency) will be an issue for Airtel broadband VAS. Extract from Airtel's submission (pdf, page 12): 11. Do you agree that the instances of ‘misleading’ tariff advertisements listed in this paper adequately capture the actual scenario in the market? If not, provide specific details. We disagree with some of the instances of tariff advertisement classified as misleading in the Consultation paper for the following reasons: a) While we agree that a strict definition of the word “Unlimited” would mean ‘without any limits’, we beg to differ with the use of the word “Unlimited” in tariff advertisements…
