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Despite disagreeing with the regulator, One NZ is changing its advertising to comply.
Jason Paris (One New Zealand)
One NZ is “respectfully disagreeing” with the Commerce Commission over an advertising stop letter issued last week, but is complying anyway.
Matt Flood, One NZ senior corporate affairs lead, said today that following a review, One NZ had let the regulator know it was always the company’s intention to wind down its “100%” campaign, which it has now completed.
The campaign was promoting a deal between One NZ and Elon Musk’s Space X to deliver coverage from satellites.
“Whilst we intend to constructively engage and will make the changes they have requested, we respectfully disagree with their view that our ‘100% mobile coverage’ campaign was confusing, likely to mislead or deceive or otherwise in breach of the Fair Trading Act,” Flood said.
“We believe customers inherently understand that while coverage will be 100 per cent when SpaceX has its satellite constellation in place by the end of 2024, there could still be issues that impact a customer’s ability to connect, in the same way that they understand there are similar impacts to cellular services today.”
One NZ is changing its advertising to state “Coverage like never before, launching 2024”, and would clearly display the disclaimer “TXT only launching by end of 2024” and where relevant “TXT delivery within minutes”.
“We trust that this will allay the commission’s concerns, and we can return our focus to bringing this state-of-the-art communication technology to One New Zealand customers, helping them to stay in touch with friends and family, connect their businesses and stay in touch in emergency situations,” Flood said.
The commission’s stop letter gave One NZ early warning of the regulator’s concerns and indicated an urgent request to stop the campaign.
Commerce Commission chair John Small said the commission’s investigations into the campaign raised concerns that it may breach of the Fair Trading Act and distort competition. 
The letter identified concerns that the campaign was potentially false and/or misleading due to the “absolute and unqualified nature” of the claim and a lack of clarification on limitations that apply to the mobile coverage. 
In particular, the limitations are that the coverage will only provide the ability to access text messaging (SMS and MMS only) from late 2024, with voice and data services following later in 2025, and the coverage will only be accessible in locations where a consumer’s mobile phone has line of sight to the sky. 
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Tags Telecommunicationsmobiles phonesSpaceXOne NZ
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