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T-Mobile Won't Stop Claiming Its Network Is Faster Than Verizon's (theverge.com) 106

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.
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T-Mobile Won't Stop Claiming Its Network Is Faster Than Verizon's

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  • https://www.t-mobile.com/offers/t-mobile-one-unlimited-55

  • Compromises (Score:4, Funny)

    by shellster_dude ( 1261444 ) on Monday October 02, 2017 @06:17PM (#55296985)
    In my experience T-Mobile was faster, but you had to find the single cell tower in the country and stand right under it. That's a bit of a downside.
    • T-Mobile recently ran billboard ads in the Twin Cities claiming they now have 4x the coverage! Other providers can't do the same because you can't have in excess of 100% coverage. Only T-Mobile still had room to increase their coverage by 4x and STILL not be at 100%.
  • 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.

    Why would anyone think anything else? X percent of Y refers to Y, not Z.

    • by Junta ( 36770 )

      Because people will easily conflate "hey it covers 99.7% of the people" with "hey, it works almost everywhere that verizon does", which as a t-mobile customer I am painfully aware that coverage is much more spotty as I go to rural areas with t-mobile than my family members that use verizon. For a large portion of the population, *where* it works as they travel is critically important. On the other hand it pretty much doesn't matter *who* it can work for apart for yourself, so 99.7% of other people isn't a

      • "On the other hand it pretty much doesn't matter *who* it can work for apart for yourself, so 99.7% of other people isn't a metric that has value to a customer" Yes it does. I simply do not care about you or your family. The 99.7% of the population convers literally everywhere I will go in the United States. Don't want terrible service? Don't live in the backwater. It amazes me how much people whine when the cause of their problems is that they don't live in civilization.
        • by Junta ( 36770 )

          Or pay extra for Verizon to have the coverage.

          The problem is if you travel, *even* if you never do something like go camping in mountains, even if you don't have relatives in a rural area, you *still* are likely to be going down some road that is neither urban nore even a major interstate and not have coverage at some point.

          It's not a big enough issue for me to pay extra, but the advertising should at least not mislead people to think in terms of geogrpahy rather than demographics.

          Besides, what does 99.7% o

    • I gotta admit, this made me chuckle.

      AT&T used to have ads which claimed to cover 99% of all Americans. Not America--Americans. Sprint has some similar ads, stating that they're within 1% of all of Verizon's customers.

      At one point, I was thinking of a Verizon ad which played on AT&T's old slogan, "We're everywhere you want to be" by saying that, "We're also everywhere you want to be--as well as a lot of places you don't want to be!" with a picture of a car broken down by the side of the road out in

      • "We're everywhere you are." led to "We're everywhere you want to be.".
        I don't recall seeing an ad that flipped it around again.

  • 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.

    That sentence made me do a double-take. How can T-Mobile cover 99,7 percent of Verizon customers without also covering 99,7 percent (or something very close) of the same geographic area? I suppose if Verizon had a small number of customers spread over a very large area it would be possible to cover 99,7 percent of Verizon customers but only, for example, 75 percent of the geographic area covered by Verizon. Still, I just do not understand how it can be in practice anything beyond a rounding error differen

    • by msauve ( 701917 ) on Monday October 02, 2017 @06:41PM (#55297141)
      "How can T-Mobile cover 99,7 percent of Verizon customers without also covering 99,7 percent (or something very close) of the same geographic area?"

      Because people don't use their cell phones exclusively at their billing address, which is what TMo is looking at. When I travel out of an urban area, I'm still covered by VZW. Not so much for those I know with TMo.
      • by Ichijo ( 607641 )

        Because people don't use their cell phones exclusively at their billing address, which is what TMo is looking at.

        The summary says T-Mobile is looking at crowdsourced data, not billing addresses.

        • by msauve ( 701917 )
          That's for speed, not coverage. They're two different metrics. That should be clear, since following the summary's quote from the article is an addition, starting with "In addition,". Duh.
    • The difference between just covering homes and offices, and covering their commutes and daily travels about. Such as whether they get cell coverage at a cousin's farm.

      If a cell phone only had coverage in a metropolitan area where phone service is normally had by many means, a cell phone has little use.

      However, if the cell phone has coverage out beyond the city limits, or areas where one is likely to be without access to a phone otherwise, then the cellular phone has significant value. So it is something
    • by raymorris ( 2726007 ) on Monday October 02, 2017 @07:23PM (#55297433) Journal

      > 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.

      • 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.

        I get this and I get how in certain localized examples it might be the case. However, I don't really see how this can be the case on a national scale.

        Also, as I understand, they are not claiming to serve 99,7% of the areas served by Verizon, rather they are claiming to serve 99,7% of the people served by Verizon. The latter would be a true statement in the example you cited.

        The reality is that numbers can be sliced and diced many ways to seem impressive. "He has a batting average of .397 when battin

        • > I get this and I get how in certain localized examples it might be the case. However, I don't really see how this can be the case on a national scale

          Nationally, almost two-thirds of the population lives in only 3.5% of the land area, according to one government publication. Another set of census data has 80% of Americans living in "urban areas", which total 3% of the land.

          So it's very easy for the percentage of people covered to be very different from the percentage of land area covered.

          This fact make

          • by fgouget ( 925644 )

            This fact makes all kinds of infrastructure in the US very different than other countries. We have vast areas, millions of square miles, with very few people. France has 1,717 people per square mile, the US has 85.

            Your numbers way off! The French population density is 300.4 [wikipedia.org] people per square mile while the US density is 90.6 [wikipedia.org] people per square mile. So instead of having density ratio of 20 it's only 3.3.

            • Your numbers way off! The French population density is 300.4 [wikipedia.org] people per square mile while the US density is 90.6 [wikipedia.org] people per square mile. So instead of having density ratio of 20 it's only 3.3.

              I guess you should use this table [wikipedia.org] instead of separated page link... And it shows that your number is still off a bit (France is at 93rd place with 319/mi^2 and US is at 185th place with 86/mi^2).

              • by fgouget ( 925644 )

                I guess you should use this table [wikipedia.org] instead of separated page link... And it shows that your number is still off a bit (France is at 93rd place with 319/mi^2 and US is at 185th place with 86/mi^2).

                It really does not matter. Either way your numbers were off by a factor > 5!

    • anecdotally, i have a great experience with t-mobile while in nyc (even better than my friends with verizon or at&t), but it absolutely degrades to shit when i'm in the middle of nowhere.

      statistically, i can't offer a thorough analysis. however, it's worth noting that i can cover 99.77% of the population of the entire United States while covering only 84% of its area. it is quite simple: omit Alaska entirely. similarly, i can cover 90% of the population while covering 51% of area by picking the top 25 m

      • Do you know what the NYCer's solution is? Don't go to the middle of nowhere. There is nothing of value in the middle of nowhere anyway and thus they get to cut their cellphone bill in half.
    • 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"

      That is exactly what they are doing.

      The result is a stupidly high price which is basically a subsidy from urban populations to the backwater.

      They do that because the average American is easily manipulated into spending more for services and features they don't need.

  • by IonOtter ( 629215 ) on Monday October 02, 2017 @06:50PM (#55297201) Homepage

    I mean, hey, if Our Fearless Leader can do it and get away with it, why not everyone else?

    • by amiga3D ( 567632 )

      RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA

    • I don't know. I need to answer for the things I say, so I'm even shy of simplifying claims about complex processes because they can imply odd things in simplified form.

      Then again, I'm an odd sort for a politician.

  • I turned off WiFi on my phone and fired up speedtest. And it turns out T-Mobie is actually better than my home ISP: 101Mbps download and 24Mbps up. I'm not sure what Verizon would be here, but why would I care? 101Mbps is fast enough for everything I use the phone for, and TMO is a lot cheaper than Verizon, includes more features for my money, and unlike Verizon is not run and staffed exclusively by slimy assholes. I know people do like to go on about Verizon's supposedly superior coverage. But I've o

  • Headline:
    "T-Mobile Won't Stop Claiming Its Network Is Faster Than Verizon's "

    Article:
    "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."

    Those are two *very different* assertions.
    Saying your "the best" in some way means absolutely nothing.
    Saying you're "better than some specific competitor" is comparative ad

  • Oh, you meant bandwidth?

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