Still pouring for Rain, as it has just conceded defeat in its conflict with the Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) over its download speed claims. This follows after the ARB ordered Rain to withdraw advertising claims related to its 5G network speed and unlimited data offering last week.
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The ARB advertising appeals committee rejected Rain’s appeal of a July ruling on its 5G network claims, which found that the claims made by network’s 5G advertising were misleading.
One Rain 5G advertisement claimed “Unlimited data 24/7”, “Your choice of network speeds”, and “Your choice of streaming quality”.
Another advertisement claimed Rain’s Unlimited Home 5G Premium service provides “average network download speeds over 200Mbps” and “high-quality video streaming”.
A Rain customer disputed these claims and submitted evidence showing download and upload speed tests that he had conducted at different locations and at different times.
RELATED READING: IT NEVER RAINS BUT POURS FOR RAIN
The ARB ruled that Rain’s advertising of unlimited 24/7 data at average speeds of over 200Mbps was misleading, stating that Rain failed to provide any evidence in substantiation of its speed and quality claims.
Rain to comply with ARB ruling
While the claims remain present on the network’s website at the time of writing, Rain CEO Willem Roos told MyBroadband that the company would comply with the ARB’s ruling.
“Rain will comply with the ARB ruling and we have the next couple of weeks to make the required changes,” Roos said.
“We respectfully disagree with the ARB as the complaint was based on the experience of a single customer.”
“The ARB also seemed to have interpreted our ’24/7′ claim to be a firm 100% quality of service uptime, when clearly this is a best-effort service,” he said.
Roos noted that Rain’s 5G network currently has a 99.7% uptime, adding that just after the launch of the 5G network, the company did experience configuration issues that resulted in poor performance for a short period.
“These have subsequently been fixed, and many users experience speeds far above 200Mbps,” he said.
However, he said that given the minor changes required to change the advertising on the Rain website, the company has decided to move on and not appeal the matter further.
Rain Unlimited Home 5G Premium advertising
The screenshot below shows the advertising present on the Rain website for its Unlimited Home 5G Premium product (click to expand).
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