AT&T Sues Verizon, Quoted Saying: 'Well, Here's A Lawsuit For That!'
Posted by Daniel Shain
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Between the Droid Does ads and the "There's a map for that" ads, Verizon has been attacking AT&T and their smartphone dominance pretty hard lately. It seems AT&T has a little something to say about the latter advertisement, and is suing Verizon over misrepresentation. Be warned - this fight could get snippy.
AT&T's argument is very simple. They claim that the above map is misleading, suggesting that if you are outside of the "blue" area that you can't get phone service at all, which is false, since AT&T's standard old 2G (and awkward intermediate 2.5G) network covers just about the entire US. In fact, Verizon already changed their ad once for AT&T, removing the phrase "out of touch" and adding some fine print reading "Voice and data services available outside of 3G areas". That didn't do the trick, and AT&T wants the misleading maps removed from all ads. This is where things get testy.AT&T claims that Verizon is doing this because it's jealous of AT&T's success, citing that they have had more sales and less churn than Verizon. Verizon answered back, saying AT&T is just upset because they're showing their weakness - it's AT&T in fact that misleads customers into thinking their 3G is better than Verizon's! After hearing this comment AT&T started pouting and shoved Verizon, reminding them that they'll have to take down their stupid map anyway.
It's really a small thing. AT&T calls it indisputable that white space = nothingness in the minds of most consumers, and they're upset that the map makes it seem like they have 0 coverage all over the place. They don't contest that the map of respective 3G coverages is quite accurate - only the sly implication by Verizon, which they said was good enough to fool 53% of people surveyed in a mall into believing the 0 coverage bit. It is worthwhile to note that the white spaces in Verizon's map truly are 0 coverage zones, since Verizon's entire network is 3G. So yah, I can understand a little confusion.
I know I haven't seen that ad aired in the last couple of days, so maybe the suit is having an effect. This seems like a pretty small and trivial thing, but hey, that's why I'm not a lawyer charging a small fortune to debate the intricacies of fair advertisement.
UPDATE: The ads haven't stopped, and in fact the ad I just saw was a 3rd, new variation on the "there's a map for that" theme, complete with aforementioned map. So Verizon is heartily ignoring AT&T for now.
nytimes
pdf of the suit
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Comments
By: netbook reviews Nov 11, 2009 7:30 PM
they're just telling the truth, can't sue for that