We’ve all seen the ads from carriers boasting better or faster coverage, but last year, when T-Mobile advertised that its LTE network was faster than Verizon’s, the latter company filed a complaint. And now a ruling by the National Advertising Division (NAD) “has recommended that T-Mobile USA, Inc., discontinue certain advertising claims made in television, print and internet advertisements,” reported Bgr.com.
Prior to the ruling, T-Mobile had already discontinued the ad campaign in question, so no “cease and desist” was necessary. But what really stung Verizon were T-Mobile’s claims that Verizon’s network slowed down (and was slower overall) than T-Mobile in the period when the ad was aired and that T-Mobile covers 99.7% as many Americans as Verizon.
The first claim was unfounded based on the utilization of crowdsourced data, which has some methodological flaws and needs to be interpreted carefully. For example, the data came from a time right after Verizon began offering unlimited data and customers were running more speed tests than usual to see if they were being throttled, thus corrupting the results and making them unreliable. The NAD ruled that any crowdsourced data is unusable in advertising claims.
In the second claim, regarding coverage, the NAD ruled that T-Mobile can claim nearly equal population coverage, but not nearly equal geographical coverage; T-Mobile was advised to omit maps in its advertising to avoid confusing the issue.
So, who won? It’s really a matter of how you spin it. Verizon is pleased that T-Mobile received a slap on the wrist from NAD, while T-Mobile sees the decision around the crowdsourced speed tests as a win, since their network is labeled the best.
October 3, 2017
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