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.

Re:Good

[Culture20]

Every time I hear those commercials, it always sounds like "There's an app for that" They run "a map" together too quickly, obviously trying to make "a m" sound like "an". Can you trademark the homophone of a catchphrase? IE, can Marvel sue if I have a rock-covered guy in a movie yell "It's clobberin' thyme!", even if it's appropriately used (the villain is punching a spice factory).

Re:3g doesn't mean fast internet

[Archangel Michael]

Then there is the ATT 3G Coverage that is misleading. I live in a fairly rural area, and near one remote ATT tower I can get full 3G speed, only the tower itself doesn't have much in the way of data off of it, so all that 3G speed is bottlenecked by ISDN speeds, or impacted T1 or some crappy microwave link or ...

So, while they "offer" 3G, it isn't what it seems, and is all but useless for any data. All that data communication is useless, and ATT customeres have to revert back to SMS text messaging.

I now have Vz on a BB, and while I do have issues, they aren't with 3G speeds. If the phone says I have 3G, I have 3G. It at least isn't lying to me.

Valid complaint

[Mr_Silver]

I've seen a couple of people who say they don't get it and use the recently modified advert as proof. The first version of the map used the words "Out of touch", had no small print and wrongly implied that outside of the coloured area you weren't going to get any coverage at all.

AT&T's data coverage may be poor (I don't know, I don't live in the USA) but there aren't massive blackspots all over America as this map implied.

See Engadget [engadget.com] for more information.

Re:They're comparing apples to crabapples

[limaxray]

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.

Re:I'm not seeing it.

[BitZtream]

The real problem is that it rarely 'falls back to 2G EDGE and continues to work' .

The map shown for AT&Ts coverage area is about the only areas you can get data in, and sometimes thats not even true.

I love my iPhone, but AT&Ts network is worthless. The whole 'Fastest 3G network' is false as well, unless I'm supposed to believe that everyone else gets speeds slower than a modem on most days, and that good speeds once a week are acceptable for being defined as 'fastest'.