Sprint Sues AT&T Over 5G Branding

Sprint Corp sued AT&T late on Thursday, saying it is misleading consumers into believing that they are using fifth generation wireless network, known as 5G, a technology that has not yet been widely deployed. From a report: AT&T customers are seeing "5G E" logo on their mobile devices in over 400 markets. Although users are still using 4G network, AT&T is calling it 5G Evolution, a faster version of its existing network and a first step on the road to 5G. 5G can offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than 4G networks.

Where is the FTC?

[sjbe]

Sprint Corp sued AT&T late on Thursday, saying it is misleading consumers into believing that they are using fifth generation wireless network, known as 5G, a technology that has not yet been widely deployed.

It's kind of annoying that the FTC [ftc.gov] (or whatever three letter agency with jurisdiction) isn't sitting on them hard about this fraud. Marketing spin is one thing but this is pretty deeply shady.

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[omnichad]

Someone has to prove that "5G" actually means something when generational labels are mostly just marketing fluff.

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[account_deleted]

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[account_deleted]

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[olsmeister]

Is there really a market for it if that is the case? I guess that maybe the wireless providers master plan is to try to cut into the cable MSO subscriber base after DSL proved to be slow and cumbersome, but with DOCSIS 3.1 rolling out and Full Duplex DOCSIS on the horizon you have to wonder if that is money well spent.

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[alvinrod]

The whole thing is a farce to begin with and the same shit played out with 4G. Hell, there's still services being sold as 4G that doesn't even meet the technical specifications for it today. Sprint should just one up them and start selling their network as 6G. Full on five blades [theonion.com] strategy.

The stupid part is that it really doesn't matter how fast your connection is when the carriers impose such tiny bandwidth caps. It's like driving a formula one car on a track with a brick wall at the end of the quarter

Re:Where is the FTC?

[UnknowingFool]

In this case, I would think the FCC would also be involved. But guess who is head of the FCC? Ajit Pai. That gives you an answer why they are not involved.

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[UnknowingFool]

The issue is that the FTC decides whether false claim was made but it doesn’t necessarily have 100% say that the claim itself was false. How would the FTC know that AT&T’s network isn’t “5G”. Someone has to decide what “5G” is. That would be under the FCC. The FTC would have to defer to the FCC as to whether AT&T’s network is 5G. Otherwise AT&T can claim that it means 5th generation which it would be the 5th generation for them.

As an example, if a

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[jwhyche]

I'm glad that Sprint is stepping up and taking this on. Under the current administration the FCC is less than useless.

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[Solandri]

False advertising is the jurisdiction of the FTC. The FCC just licenses the airwaves and how they're used. It doesn't regulate what the licencees decide to call it (LTE, WiMax, UMTS, HSDPA, etc - I'm an engineer and love acronyms as much as any other engineer, but I really wish these things had gotten better names). We all love to crap on Ajit Pai, but this really is outside the FCC's jurisdiction.

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[UnknowingFool]

It isn’t in the jurisdiction of the FTC to determine what is and isn’t “5G” cellular networks. If there is no official definition then the FTC cannot decide for or against AT&T. The Federal Communication Commission could decide what “5G” just like it decides what is “broadband”.

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[Darinbob]

The FTC historically has never done much, it's pretty much toothless. This is why the anti-government crowd prefers having the FTC have jurisdiction rather than other departments with a better record at effectiveness.

The U.S. government needs FAR better management.

[Futurepower(R)]

I wish the U.S. government managed effectively. Government should limit corporate abuse.

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[nanospook]

It's not management, its corporate corruption at the top..

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[Red_Forman]

If you ask me, 1080i is not HD either. Why they kept fucking interlaced formats when switching to digital, I'll never understand. What a bunch of dumbasses.

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[omnichad]

Because 60p wasn't going to happen and sports broadcasting demands faster motion.

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[Red_Forman]

But 720p is less problematic than 1080i. I've stopped counting the number of times I've seen bad de-interlacing on live TV years ago.

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[omnichad]

Live TV doesn't need to be de-interlaced with anything but doubling. Each field should be interpolated separately and shown at the full 60Hz. There is no reason to combine that down to 30 frames.

Bad de-interlacing probably comes down to video that was not flagged as interlaced before it was compressed and ended up with bad artifacts as a result. Or your device was sending the video to your TV without it being flagged properly.

AT&T is calling it 5G Evolution

[Red_Forman]

And I'm calling it "5G dumbasses".

They should call it "4G E", for "4G enhanced" and it would probably be okay with everyone involved.

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[Anonymous Coward]

that's what the "4G LTE" bullshit was.. fake "4G" that didn't quite meet the actual specs for it.. so technically, at&t's "5G E" is actually 3G (aka " 3.95G") masquerading as 4G but they're calling it 5G.

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[_merlin]

LTE actually is 4G. What AT&T did was get phones with their branded firmware to display "4G" annunciator in W-CDMA HSPA+ mode. This is an enhancement to 3G UMTS W-CDMA and phones usually use a "3G H+" annunciator for it.

Everyone calls LTE 4G - it's a completely different technology (OFDMA/SC-FDMA with cyclic prefix rather than CDMA), and gives far better battery life as well as better data rates. But now AT&T is now using "5GE" branding for faster modes of LTE. Other carriers call this "4GX" and

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[rjr162]

No, LTE was not/is not 4G. LTE Advanced *would* have met the requirements. Marketing folks fudged the names for marketing reasons.
Look at the ITU classifications and the actual specs of LTE

What standing does Sprint have?

[radarskiy]

5G in this context is a trademark of 3GPP. Only they can object to an unauthorized usage.

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[drinkypoo]

5G in this context is a trademark of 3GPP. Only they can object to an unauthorized usage.

They're not objecting to an unauthorized usage, they're objecting to fraudulent usage which is designed to provide an unfair competitive advantage, which is an anticompetitive practice [classlawgroup.com].

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[Anonymous Coward]

Sprint isn't accusing them of trademark infringement, they're accusing them of false advertising.

have the ITU revise the 5G spec to make it clear

[EnOne]

If the International Olympic Committee IOC can say who can and can't say "Olympics" then the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) should be able to say what is and isn't "4G" "4G LTE" "4G LTE E" "5G E" or "5G"

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[omnichad]

So that just means that Sprint/FTC goes after them instead of AT&T. Or are you saying that anyone can just fund a trade group and shield themselves from scrutiny?

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[EnOne]

The ITU is the group that comes up with the specs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] the same way that the IOC covers Olympics and the International Bureau of Weights and Measures says what a "meter" and a "kilogram" are.

Beat them at their own game.

[bob4u2c]

Just run a few adds quickly explaining that other vendors have branded their old networks 5G E, but Sprint is putting up true 5G technology which includes better x and y. Show a few simple graphs of someone browsing websites on the 5G E network vs their true 5G network. Follow up with 5G E is just the old 4LTE network given a new name. Maybe something like an old time miner polishing up a piece of junk and trying to pass it off as the latest thing.

Actually I find it funny the AT&T commercials that

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[Anonymous Coward]

Sprint hasn't started with their 3G deployment though, they're just a few decades behind the curve.

A case of the pot calling the kettle black..

[nanospook]

Umm Sprint? Remember when I was your customer? Those years where you prated on about having 4G and all I could get was 3G unless I was at your store? Step out into the street you said? Head downtown Dallas you said? Endless reasons why it didn't work for me. Poser..

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[pauljlucas]

Yeah, I'll never use Sprint again. I tried them a few years ago with an LTE-equipped iPad. I was standing on Market Street in downtown San Francisco and was getting litterally an order of magnitude worse bandwidth than my Verizon iPhone at the exact same location. I dropped Sprint and and now both devices use Verizon.

Sprint did the same thing in the past

[Agent0013]

Sprint did the same thing with a fake version of 4G that was actually using the 3G network. The old Samsung Epic I had would boot up with big 4G swirling text, but it was the same thing AT&T is doing now. Perhaps they are actually upset about them being copied.

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[Solandri]

I had an Epic 4G. It supported WiMax [gsmarena.com], which was a legit 4G service. It lost out to LTE due to higher power consumption and inferior bandwidth utilization. Sprint eventually converted its WiMax towers to LTE, but that was long after I'd replaced the phone. In the areas which had WiMax coverage, I typically got 15-20 Mbps, vs about 1-3 Mbps for 3G. (Course the phone wold die in 2 hours from the battery drain of using WiMax...)

4.5G

[sixsixtysix]

Why not be smart and use 4.5G?

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[thegarbz]

Why not be smart and use 4.5G?

Why spin something like that when you can sell your service on marketing hype knowing full well consumer protection laws in the USA aren't worth a damn?