Slashdot Mirror
T-Mobile Won't Stop Claiming Its Network Is Faster Than Verizon's (theverge.com)
T-Mobile says it will continue to claim it has the country's fastest LTE network even after the National Advertising Division, a telecom industry watchdog group, "recommended" that it stop doing so in print, TV, and web advertisements. In a statement given to Ars Technica, "NAD previously recognized third-party crowdsourced data as a way to look at network performance, so we looked at the latest results, and verified what we already knew. T-Mobile is still the fastest LTE network and we'll continue to let consumers know that." The Verge reports: The dispute arose earlier this year as part of a T-Mobile ad campaign that insinuated that Verizon's network was older and slower, and that its service did not feature unlimited plans. Verizon then filed a complaint with the NAD, which is a self-regulatory body of the telecom industry designed to settle disputes, avoid litigation, and protect against unwanted government regulation. Verizon said at the time that because T-Mobile was relying on crowdsourced data from third-party speed test providers Ookla and OpenSignal, the data was skewed in favor of T-Mobile. The data was pulled from a one-month period after Verizon first reintroduced its unlimited plans. Verizon's logic wasn't super bulletproof: the company claimed that because it had never before offered unlimited plans, T-Mobile customers -- who were familiar with the concept of throttling after a certain data threshold -- were more likely to be sampled in the crowdsourced data set provided to the NAD. Still, T-Mobile discontinued the disputed commercial, and the NAD felt the need to offer guidelines last week, advising the company not to claim its network was faster or newer. In addition, the NAD also told T-Mobile to modify its claim that it covered 99.7 percent of Verizon customers to make clear that the coverage is by population and not geographic area.
> If Verizon's customer base were so skewed in that way, they would be spending very large amounts of money to serve a very small customer population across a very large area.
Just the other day we had a couple stories about a carrier sending notices to something like 0.3% of their customers, who live out in the boonies and are roaming on towers owned by another carrier, but they are streaming TV shows.
Consider some Texas counties. Harris county (Houston) and Dallas county each have millions of people. Loving county has 100 people. They are roughly the same size in terms of geographic area.
Suppose Verizon covers Dallas county and Loving county. T-Mobile covers Dallas county, but not Loving. T-Mobile would then cover roughly HALF the geographic area that Verizon does, while covering 99.996% of the people.