Apple Offers ‘Misled’ Australian iPad Owners Refund Over 4G Claim

Apple has said it is willing to refund Australian customers who felt misled over its claims about the new iPad’s 4G functionality.

The country’s consumer watchdog, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), took legal action after it emerged the new tablet’s advertised 4G connectivity was incompatible with the LTE (Long Term Evolution) service operated by Telstra.

Customers not misled?

The Cupertino-based company made the offer following a preliminary hearing at the Federal Court in Melbourne, but refused to accept full responsibility. Its lawyers said that although it was willing to publish a clarification, it had never once claimed that the new iPad would work on an Australian 4G network.

The ACCC said this was false advertising, claiming “Apple’s recent promotion of the new ‘iPad with Wi-Fi + 4G’ is misleading because it represents to Australian consumers that the product can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, when this is not the case.”

Apple said the 4G compatibility claims are based on what is generally globally considered to be a 4G network, and that its website does state it only supports selected LTE networks in the United States and Canada.

The new iPad only supports the 700MHz and 2.1GHz spectrums used by 4G operators in North America. These frequencies are currently used for television broadcasts and 3G services in Europe, but not for 4G.

Existing LTE networks in Germany, Sweden and Finland operate on unsupported frequencies, as do those in Hong Kong, South Korea and Saudi Arabia.

Any potential UK 4G network would be supported, although this is not an immediate concern given the protracted process of auctioning off iPad-incompatible spectrum. The proposed Everything Everywhere LTE network, which could potentially arrive before the end of the year, is still up in the air too.

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