Slashdot Mirror
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
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?
I don't believe that joke has legs
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
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
I've got a friend who's still driving trucks over the road (long-haul) and he went with Verizon due to coverage. Although their customer service and contracts stink, they do have the widest coverage of all the wireless carriers and if you need service throughout the country, then they're pretty much the only choice.
Mod me up/Mod me down: I wont frown as I've no crown
It doesn't scale either.
Get off my lawn.
Otherwise they would sell fully unlimited packages, . . . . when what they really meant was 400minutes
They already do that with data. Virtually every cell carrier has unlimited* data.
* Not to exceed 5GB per month.
It'd be like advertising health salt-free* potato chips and everyone just accepting it without griping. Cell phone advertisers and companies these days are border line con-men.
* Excepting salt added for flavor.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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.
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 . . ..
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.