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AT&T Sues Verizon Over "Map For That" Ads
MahlonS writes "AP is reporting on a suit filed in Northern Georgia in which AT&T claims that Verizon's 'There's a Map for That' ads are misleading and amount to deceptive trade practices. Verizon had already agreed to modify their original ad to include a tag line that voice and data services are available outside 3G coverage areas." What's interesting is that on some level, this is actually a lawsuit over data visualization.
That's non-sense. 1xEVDO Rev. A is capable of 3 Mbps and all of Verizon's network uses this technology - I'm pretty sure that falls in the the understanding of what is 3G. In actual practice though, Verizon's network supplies a pretty consistent 1 Mbps connection all across the country, which is about 4x faster than the maximum theoretical throughput of an EDGE network.
Furthermore, the fact that WCDMA is very inflexible and depends on 5 MHz channels means that in the few places that there actually is service, you are less likely to be able to use it because there are fewer channels serving fewer clients. Go ask any iPhone user about the fantastic reliability of AT&T's 3G network. WCDMA just doesn't fare well in markets where the use of wireless spectrum isn't dictated by government mandate as it is in the EU. Also AT&T has yet to even deploy HSPA+ on a large scale to the best of my knowledge, so to say that they're service is that much faster (although it is slightly faster) is just wrong.