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AT&T Loses First Legal Battle Against Verizon
FutureDomain writes "A federal judge in Atlanta has declined a restraining order from AT&T that would have prevented Verizon from running ads that compared their 3G coverage to AT&T's. AT&T felt that Verizon's ads 'mislead consumers into thinking that AT&T doesn't offer wireless service in large portions of the country, which is clearly not the case.' Verizon argued that the ads clearly indicated that the maps were only of 3G coverage, and that AT&T is only suing because it doesn't want to face the truth about its network."
Can you hear us now?
Can you hear us now?
Can you hear us now?
"His name was James Damore."
because it's not LIBEL if it's TRUE.
They were insane to bring this to court. Verizon could not have paid for better advertising. This is going to go down in the book as one of the stupidest moves in business history.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Is anyone surprised at this result? Verizon advertises its better 3G coverage. It's true. Simple as that. No more debate necessary.
The unfortunate problem with a deregulated economic system is that, companies want to use deregulation but the power to enforce contracts as a way to not have to compete. Libertarian ideas about competition are just as utopian as socialist ideas about cooperation simply because the smartest thing for a company to do is to not have to spend money and take the sort of risks needed to actually compete. They confine themselves to areas they can patent, they make principals sign non-competes and non-disclosures, obfuscate the relationship between pricing and product all so they can minimize how much they have to actually compete. IF we are to say that companies are to have the means of giving themselves monopolies, then it is fair for liberals to demand that companies accept certain social obligations in exchange for that letters patent effectively granted by the government. Only if companies do not accept the government's help in reducing competition, can they morally make the claim that they are free market and should not be interfered with by the government. Only as much as conservatives demand companies have less monopoly powers can they demand that the government have less power over the companies too.
This is my sig.
IMHO both companies's customer service are horrible, so it's irrelevant to me how good or bad their respective networks are.
They may "hear me now"... but neither has been willing to LISTEN.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Okay this could get me sued, but here's a joke I just thought up... (yeah, it's lame) Q. What did the snakecharmer say to advertise his business? A. There's an asp for that. wah-wah-wah...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
Do AT&T really think they can win a case where their only argument is "Verizon has misleading advertising?" Don't "misleading" and "advertising" go hand in hand? Since when is it supposed to be objective?
I see these ads a lot; they run often during college football games here in Florida. I have AT&T on a non-3G phone so it doesn't really apply to me, but if I were in the market for a 3G phone I'd definitely want to follow-up on those ads.
I don't think they're misleading - they say "if you want to know why your friend's 3G coverage is so spotty" (or something along those lines, with 3G mentioned every time) and the examples given are all 3G-specific (high-bandwidth applications). Besides, who advertises about the breadth of their 2G service these days? It's very clear that it's talking about 3G.
This is a little off topic, but if there is one industry that desperately needs some Truth In Advertising laws enforced, its the wireless industry. I don't know why AT&T is so pissed. All the major carriers play up the smallest advantage they have over competitors as 'THE' deciding factor in who is the best carrier. How can Sprint AT&T and Verizon all have the best 3G networks like they each claim in their commercials?
Yeah, I've got nothing...
Not having read anything about the case, and I know it can't happen, but just based on how ethical the slashdot comments make AT&T and Verizon appear to be...
Ahem.
I hope they both lose.
That's a bit like Goliath fighting Goliath. Where the hell is David?
There's not a restraining order for that!
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
Living out in the boonies, where a lot of baby-bells tend to roam, a lot of the bigger companies like AT&T and Verizon have been competing like wildfire. Not too long ago, my friend, who gets service through AT&T and I, who goes through Verizon, decided to see who had better coverage in the plains states by seeing which had better signal coverage. Whenever his service would drop a call, mine would go down to just 1 or no bars, but my calls never got dropped, unless it was a quick and steep incline in the road. Even gradual inclines would drop his service. That pretty much sealed it right there.
I've personally fallen for a similar scam (or so I felt) when I bought a digital camera. The camera included a "lithium digital camera battery" but failed to mention that it was a throw-away, non-rechargeable battery. When I got it home and opened it, I was exasperated to read the documentation and find that the rechargeable batteries are "lithium-ion" and I'm expected to buy them separately – and to add insult to injury, at inflated prices. Yeah, I made an uninformed decision when I bought the camera, but I felt that Kodak (yes, I'll name names) deliberately tried to leave it confusing so that people would do exactly as I did.
Truth in advertising, IMHO, would be served if Verizon was required to put a tagline to the effect that "Note: Normal cellular calling coverage may extend outside the 3G-covered area". A lot of normal users don't know the difference between "3G" and regular talk coverage any more than I knew the difference between "lithium" and "lithium-ion" batteries.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
It would be nice to be able to go to a generic cell service store where there's a two step process to getting a phone: 1. select a phone, 2. select a carrier. Have it all laid out right there in one store. No need to stick with one carrier because you want a certain phone, more innovation on the cell phone side since manufacturers don't have to worry about carriers laying out the rules, and carriers forced to really compete with services because they can't guarantee users through phone lock-ins. I know that probably won't happen here in the US anytime soon, if ever, but a nice happy thought to ponder while I sip on my coffee.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Hissssssssssssssss
I read Slashdot for the headlines, because the headlines, unlike the articles, are usually original and never duplicated
You can't really compare the maps anyway.
Verizon's map is a coverage area map. They paint broad swaths of area where they have towers, but don't show any gaps in signal. Even up here in Verizon country (New England), I found that Verizon has plenty of dead zones where I don't get signal yet I'm in an area of the map that says I should. Verizon just takes each tower (I guess) and paints a circle around it with the theoretical diameter that the tower could reach.
AT&T's map, as far as I can see, is an actual signal map If I zoom in on it, I see predicted levels of signal and gaps in coverage that correspond roughly with the gaps I actually experience when I'm going places. It's not perfectly accurate, of course, but at least it makes the apparent attempt to be honest about actual signal. I don't know how they do it - perhaps they simply check terrain in Google Earth and look for landscape that "shadows" a tower. But whatever - I find it's very rare for me to lose signal in areas where the AT&T map shows coverage.
So, while Verizon may technically be accurate in stating that they have better "3G coverage" nationwide, I bet if you actually compared signal (that is, areas where you can actually get a 3G signal, and not areas within x miles of a tower regardless of terrain), Verizon's map would look a whole lot less thorough.
Verizon has the better 3G coverage. Fine, I get that. Of course, I don't have a 3G capable phone so I really don't care. But I get that it is important to some people. Verizon even has (marginally) better Voice/non-3G Data coverage here in New England.
But I had no way of honestly comparing them based on the coverage maps. AT&T showed me incomplete coverage that matched my real-world experience with my prepaid Go! phone. Verizon showed absolute 100% coverage everywhere which certainly did NOT match our experience with my wife's Verizon phone.
Example: My mother lives in a small town on the coast. When I go to her house, coverage is VERY spotty - you basically have to be near a window to get a bar or two. Verizon and AT&T have the exact same actual signal - very low (1-2 bars) and you have to pretty much be at a window standing still to make a call and have any hope of completing a conversation. My wife's Verizon phone and my AT&T phone were pretty much identical in performance.
The maps tell a very different story. AT&T shows my mother's house as "no coverage" along with a good chunk of the peninsula she lives on. Verizon shows the entire peninsula she lives on with full-on 3G coverage, no gaps whatsoever. Most of the peninsula has *no coverage of any kind* with AT&T or Verizon.
I finally concluded that I'd rather be told the truth, and when my company offered the choice of carriers for my Crackberry I went with AT&T. It didn't hurt, of course, that Verizon also locks out the GPS on the models we had, and AT&T allows me to use it (Verizon CLAIMED you could, but then they told you afterward that you had to buy the $10/month TeleNav service and even then you STILL wouldn't be allowed to use the GPS with anything other than TeleNav, Blackberry Maps, and Google Maps).
I have no particular love for AT&T, but at least they appear to be making an effort at honesty about their signal coverage, and when they sell me a phone with a feature installed they let me use the feature.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Just curious if people really care that much about nationwide 3G coverage. Unless you travel constantly to many different states, what matters most is local coverage.
I visited northern NH for a week this summer and didn't have 3G (on AT&T). I barely noticed.
How can Sprint AT&T and Verizon all have the best 3G networks like they each claim in their commercials?
"Best" is a subjective term. Does it mean the fastest 3G? The one with the widest area of coverage? The one with the least amount of downtime? The one with the highest customer satisfaction? Or some selective combination of all the above?
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Pizza Hut sued Papa John's because Papa John's was claiming "better ingredients, better pizza." Pizza Hut lost. These lawsuits are a stupid waste of courts' time--and of taxpayer money.
Maybe I'll boycott AT&T for awhile . . ..
Anyone have a link to the ads? As is common with lawsuits, I want to see why AT&T is suing.
I think that Verizon's commercial isn't misleading, and is pretty good. I have always liked Verizon over other cell companies. That being said, with the recent issues with the Droid camera, a good counter commercial should be someone using the iphone and the someone else using the Droid to take pictures of someone, (Of course the Droid would have a fuzzy screen) while the person posing for the picture says to the Droid phone owner, "[Sarcastically] Can you see me know?"
I think pretty much everyone would rather have a 2.5 mbit network that mostly works than a 14 mbit network that's mostly vaporware.
But I agree that all of the "nG" nonsense is so much marketing bull, and getting worse. It used to be simple enough - 0G was non-cellular radiotelephone. 1G was analog. 2G was digital voice. 3G was digital data. Anything beyond that is just fluff, especially the "fractional-G" technologies.
Good point. I don't think most people realize you don't have to sign the contract. However, you usually lsoe all the "free" goodies they are offering to sign up. If you are willing to pay up front for a cell phone, equipment, etc, you normally don't have to sign any long term contracts. It is usually best to compare how much you would pay up front to how much terminating your contract would be,
As nerds, and political activists, how can we promote competition in the wireless market on a metric more similar to "how fast does nytimes.com load" than "what is the maximum theoretical limit using the network?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
According to Truth in Advertising, you don't need to qualify the word "best." Anything can be the "best" in regards to any specific condition due to it being a subjective term. However, and this has been brought to court successfully many times, "better" does need qualification. Something can only be "better" than something else if you can prove it. So better is better than best and best is next to meaningless in advertising speak.
Boo-freakin-hoo AT&T, you blew your (iPhone) revenues on obnoxious and pervasive advertising while VZW spent their revenues building out their 3G network (first) with obnoxious advertisements following afterward. While I hate you both, you have no case AT&T and your network is inferior.
grep -iw skynet
I figured most people would understand, but I wasn't sure. So I polled a college class of mine, and 17 out of 17 students misunderstood the add. All students thought the maps indicated total coverage, not 2G vs 3G. And to top it off, no one really knew what 3G was anyway.
I have the regular AT&T plan on my blackberry, nothing special
It irks me when I can't make a call when others next to me, using different providers can
AT&T sucks! As soon as my contract is up, I'll be looking for a different provider
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
AT&T should be more worried about their own reps misleading customers because of their incompetence
Verizon's ads do mislead consumers by deliberately confusing "area" of coverage with respect to population with area of coverage with respect to square miles.
Much of Verizon's "much greater" coverage is desert and farmland and very low-population areas. They do indicate so in the fine print of the ads, but I'm sure they'd be "Shocked! Shocked!" to find out the average viewer thought they meant percent of actual population covered.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
coverage is coverage you fucking retard.
I think AT&T had a case here. Verizon is talking about their 3g as roughly equivalent to AT&T's EDGE. They're showing their EDGE-equivalence next to AT&T's HSDPA coverage.
For what it's worth, AT&T says that all their towers have EDGE - that is, their entire coverage area. And HSDPA is ridiculously fast - theoretically it can be something like 30Mbps, but I've tested it in real-life to 6Mbps. I don't think Verizon even has anything to match that.
It's a reasonable idea for an ad, because I think Verizon's coverage is generally larger than AT&T's, but the mostly-full AT&T map next to the fuller Verizon map wouldn't be so dramatic. And that's what they'd need to be fair.
In short, AT&T wants them to compare apples to apples.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
If the iPhone is really going to be available from Verizon, I cannot WAIT to see how many problems they have with network bandwith and all that other stuff because iPhone users are taxing it.
And as others have undoubtedly pointed out, let's just see if Verizon doesn't cap your data.
AT&T needs a way to confuse their rivals...and customers. Perhaps AT&T needs a name-change...again. Eventually, they'll run out of names.
AT&T are a bunch of idiots for bringing this suit, and losing makes it even worse. A lot of people were already aware of how crappy their coverage is and now even more people are.
Verizon has pulled a lot of jackass moves in the past, like disabling half the features on a phone and making you pay for their crappy Verizon branded replacements. They also nickel-and-dime you to death, have big overage costs, few low-end plans, and way overpriced accessories ($30 for a car charger, what?). Also their customer support is bad, the people manning their kiosks (who are often not Verizon employees) will lie their asses off for a commission, and the corporate owned store employees will give you wrong information about half the time.
As a Verizon customer (through their assimilation of Alltel) what I will give them credit for the following:
1. The Droid kicks ass as a smart phone, and almost nothing is disabled other than tethering, which you can get around if so inclined. I didn't think they were capable of releasing an un-crippled decent phone but they did.
2. The 5GB cap everyone keeps bringing up (and was listed in those smartphone comparison charts) is a lie. The 5GB cap applies to non-smarphones like a simple flip phone, if you get a smartphone like the Droid you are forced to get a different data plan (with a different name) which is "unlimited" in that there is no cap listed in the terms. What they do say in the terms is they can cut you off if you have "excessive usage" which is in every phone company or ISP contract, but there is no hard cap. 2. Their network blows AT&T's out of the water in terms of coverage. While AT&T may be theoretically faster under perfect condition I care about what things are like in the real world, and if your signal sucks half the time then who cares how fast it is the rest of the time. A little anecdote, I can drive around town at 40mph (southern AZ) with Last.fm streaming and it almost never drops out. Most people I know with iphones, if they are in the wrong part of town, have to go outside to make a call and not have it drop after 5 minutes.
AT&T and Verizon are both bastards, the difference is Verizon has a functional network and AT&T just spent a bunch of money to point this out and make themselves look like crybabies who can't compete.
The problem with AT&T is the same problem with Apple. AT&T does not want to have competition and knowing that they are losing to Verizon Wireless because they blew all their cash on iphones, which is clearly shown as failing in other Slashdot reports goes to show that AT&T have adjusted to the idea that they dominated the market with their crappy iphone, whereas Veirzon actually did something appealing to us by making a smart phone Android that will be open source, meaning that people can develop apps their way, for which is nice. We also have to take in account that Verizon is US based and that they heavily market here in the US. So, I wouldn't be surprised if the Map of 3G coverages is true, knowing that AT&T is not just marketing here in US, but around the world. They do have a big market here, but i would like to see Verizon take over the market with the Android, for which i cant wait to develop apps for. Now, how does this relate with Apple? We see clearly that Apple has failed with their close sourcing the iPhone, having stupid approval processes for the apps, for which everyone hates, and that they are making deals with companies that can't handle with the fact that their coverages are crap. The best move for AT&T right now is to drop the case, say that Verizon is right, and start to focus on what the customers actually want. Apple needs to change their ideals that their products are the best, cause they're not. Apple needs to make computers that can actually play games that Windows OSes can and to reduce their outrageous prices for some mac which doesn't have that good hardware. For the hand-held items, please make them open-source and admit that controlling the market on apps will not work in the long run. That would be a form of communism as seen in China, with major control all just because you like to control the cash. I will laugh about the stupidness of AT&T, though.