Competition Bureau doubles down on claims Rogers 'Infinite' data claim is false

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OTTAWA — The Competition Bureau is doubling down on its claims that Rogers’ unlimited data promise is misleading.

In a response to Rogers’ recent defence filing, the Commissioner of Competition repeated the allegation that the company’s advertisements create a false or misleading impression that its “Infinite” wireless phone plans provide consumers with limitless data.

The bureau announced in December it was suing the carrier, saying unlimited data claims are misleading given that customers’ data service is severely throttled once a data cap is reached.

It said data speeds are reduced by more than 99 per cent once a customer hits the cap, though Rogers said most customers never hit that limit.

In Rogers’ defence filed earlier in February, the company said the bureau is unreasonably targeting the company for an advertising format that its competitors also use.

“Rogers introduced its Infinite wireless plans in June 2019, spurring a significant procompetitive shift in the Canadian market for high-data users,” the company said.

However, Commissioner Matthew Boswell says that Rogers’ framing of the other carriers following suit as “pro-competitive” is false.

“The fact that other wireless carriers may have copied Rogers’ reviewable conduct is an aggravating factor, not a mitigating one,” he wrote in the filing.

Rogers spokesperson Zac Carreiro said in an emailed statement Thursday that the bureau’s reply “entirely misses the point.”

“The bureau is not only ignoring the consumer benefits of these plans, they’re ignoring the widespread disclosure of the plan features and targeting Rogers for an industry-wide practice,” he said.

Rogers’ Feb. 6 response also said the bureau ignored the company’s “ubiquitous disclosure” of key plan features and consumers’ “widespread” understanding of such plans, and said it presents a selective and misleading collection of advertisements as examples.

“Rogers at all times complied with the legal and regulatory requirements to market wireless plans as having unlimited data,” the company said.

However, the commissioner says the allegedly false or misleading ads at the centre of the lawsuit “are not negated by other advertisements … that are also false or misleading in a material respect.”

“The implication of Rogers’ defence is that a company can blatantly engage in an extensive campaign of advertising that is false or misleading, provided at a latter stage it makes advertisements which are less misleading,” he said.

The commissioner also disagrees that the “minimal disclosures” in other ads were adequate to overcome the claims that the plan had unlimited data.