T-Mobile's 'unlimited' Full Monty plan is actually limited for 18 hours a day

The UK arm of T-Mobile is now forbidden from advertising 'unlimited' data with its top-of-the-shop Full Monty tariffs.

The Advertising Standards agency has ruled the company's practice of throttling customers peer-to-peer sharing activities from 8am to 2am does (surprise, surprise) constitute limiting data.

The practice leaves only a 6 hour period in the middle of the night when restrictions are not in place and that gave the ASA the excuse it needed to crack the whip.

According to The Inquirer, T-Mobile has already changed its Full Monty advertising to reflect the ruling.

It ain't just the amount of data

The verdict read: "We noted that the Full Monty plan was described as having 'unlimited' UK internet and that this was in the context of a mobile dataservice on a handset. We considered that 'unlimited' was a general claim about the whole service, rather than about a specific aspect of the service."

"We considered that consumers were likely to expect that services, or features of services, described as 'unlimited' were not unduly limited and that where policies existed, which limited speed of access, that the restrictions could reasonably be considered to be moderate only."

Is 4Mbps sufficient?

However, the ASA appeared to have no objections to the overall speed restrictions T-Mobile places on its Full Monty customers.

As The Inquirer also pointed out, the company limits download speeds over 3G to just 4Mbps, while uploads are only processed at 1Mbps, which T-Mobile says is "sufficient."

The company said in a statement: "Our customers should rest assured that the speeds available to them on our Full Monty plans are sufficient for all devices and users - including data downloaders with the latest smartphones, and data services such as video streaming, social networking, browsing, emailing, and music downloading."

Last year the company angered customers by halting free mobile tethering on its Full Monty plan.