AT&T Loses First Legal Battle Against Verizon 214
FutureDomain writes "A federal judge in Atlanta has declined a restraining order from AT&T that would have prevented Verizon from running ads that compared their 3G coverage to AT&T's. AT&T felt that Verizon's ads 'mislead consumers into thinking that AT&T doesn't offer wireless service in large portions of the country, which is clearly not the case.' Verizon argued that the ads clearly indicated that the maps were only of 3G coverage, and that AT&T is only suing because it doesn't want to face the truth about its network."
Re:Can you hear us now? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Surprised? (Score:5, Informative)
Even if it is they aren't advertising that their 3G is faster, just that their 3G is larger than AT&T which is completely true. Verizon upgraded all of their towers to support 3G, AT&T has only upgraded some towers in more concentrated metro areas.
Verizon is beginning to upgrade towers to 4G next year. And supposedly according to rumors there is another Android phone either on black Friday or mid December along with a bunch of other new smart phones launching throughout December. They are going after AT&T very aggressively.
Re:Surprised? (Score:2, Informative)
I believe that ATT themselves consider Edge to be 2.5G, that is what they advertise it as. I would personally say that the speed is more then enough on Verizon, but I'm not goofy about my phone usage and trying to turn it into a TV, so I could be unusual.
Re:Truthful ads, actually (Score:3, Informative)
I've got a friend who's still driving trucks over the road (long-haul) and he went with Verizon due to coverage. Although their customer service and contracts stink, they do have the widest coverage of all the wireless carriers and if you need service throughout the country, then they're pretty much the only choice.
Re:Surprised? (Score:2, Informative)
well if you looked at his wiki link....
verizon:
1xEV-DO Rev. A 3,100/1,800 kbit/s
att:
HSDPA/HSUPA 14,400/5760 kbit/s
Maps (Score:5, Informative)
You can't really compare the maps anyway.
Verizon's map is a coverage area map. They paint broad swaths of area where they have towers, but don't show any gaps in signal. Even up here in Verizon country (New England), I found that Verizon has plenty of dead zones where I don't get signal yet I'm in an area of the map that says I should. Verizon just takes each tower (I guess) and paints a circle around it with the theoretical diameter that the tower could reach.
AT&T's map, as far as I can see, is an actual signal map If I zoom in on it, I see predicted levels of signal and gaps in coverage that correspond roughly with the gaps I actually experience when I'm going places. It's not perfectly accurate, of course, but at least it makes the apparent attempt to be honest about actual signal. I don't know how they do it - perhaps they simply check terrain in Google Earth and look for landscape that "shadows" a tower. But whatever - I find it's very rare for me to lose signal in areas where the AT&T map shows coverage.
So, while Verizon may technically be accurate in stating that they have better "3G coverage" nationwide, I bet if you actually compared signal (that is, areas where you can actually get a 3G signal, and not areas within x miles of a tower regardless of terrain), Verizon's map would look a whole lot less thorough.
Verizon has the better 3G coverage. Fine, I get that. Of course, I don't have a 3G capable phone so I really don't care. But I get that it is important to some people. Verizon even has (marginally) better Voice/non-3G Data coverage here in New England.
But I had no way of honestly comparing them based on the coverage maps. AT&T showed me incomplete coverage that matched my real-world experience with my prepaid Go! phone. Verizon showed absolute 100% coverage everywhere which certainly did NOT match our experience with my wife's Verizon phone.
Example: My mother lives in a small town on the coast. When I go to her house, coverage is VERY spotty - you basically have to be near a window to get a bar or two. Verizon and AT&T have the exact same actual signal - very low (1-2 bars) and you have to pretty much be at a window standing still to make a call and have any hope of completing a conversation. My wife's Verizon phone and my AT&T phone were pretty much identical in performance.
The maps tell a very different story. AT&T shows my mother's house as "no coverage" along with a good chunk of the peninsula she lives on. Verizon shows the entire peninsula she lives on with full-on 3G coverage, no gaps whatsoever. Most of the peninsula has *no coverage of any kind* with AT&T or Verizon.
I finally concluded that I'd rather be told the truth, and when my company offered the choice of carriers for my Crackberry I went with AT&T. It didn't hurt, of course, that Verizon also locks out the GPS on the models we had, and AT&T allows me to use it (Verizon CLAIMED you could, but then they told you afterward that you had to buy the $10/month TeleNav service and even then you STILL wouldn't be allowed to use the GPS with anything other than TeleNav, Blackberry Maps, and Google Maps).
I have no particular love for AT&T, but at least they appear to be making an effort at honesty about their signal coverage, and when they sell me a phone with a feature installed they let me use the feature.
Re:Of course they did... (Score:4, Informative)
The thing is, the adverts are certainly bending the truth, even if they're not breaking it. The maps of Verizon's network cover *all* their network, because there's no difference between 2.5G/3G on their technology. By contrast, there's a technical difference between EDGE and 3G on AT&T's network.
The result – the maps show verizon to have coverage and AT&T not, even in areas where (for example) verizon's network runs like crap, and AT&T has excellent 2.5G coverage.
Re:Can you hear us now? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh it's a lot more convoluted than that.
For all intents and purposes when you think of the AT&T monopoly of yore, actually Verizon is more of that than the current incarnation of AT&T that is entertaining us today with this legal battle.
First, AT&T was divested. The monopoly part became mini-monopolies - the Baby Bells. They were still almost exclusively the only show in town for what they did (local telephony). AT&T actually had to compete at that point, on several fronts. Long Distance became a highly competitive arena over time. And the part that made telephony infrastructure equipment could no longer simply dictate to the local phone companies what they were gonna buy.
The first wave of Wireless in the US was a mandated duopoly. Each area got two licenses for wireless service providers. The "B" band went to the established phone company while the "A" band was up for grabs. The "B" side was often termed the "wireline" side because they were established companies already. Gradually, a large chunk of the upstart "A" side companies coalesced into McCaw. Before the "B" side companies started merging, McCaw was actually bigger than most.
Eventually AT&T bought McCaw and became or created AT&T Wireless.
The game changed with lots more licenses and more players.
SBC bought up Ameritech, then AT&T and then changed it's name to AT&T.
In all of that, if you restrict your view to the Wireless stuff Verizon is much more directly a descendant of the Baby Bells.
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Of course they did... (Score:4, Informative)
Don't agree. After this whole thing blew up I watched the Verizon ads. They make clear they are discussing 3G coverage, not generalized coverage (which would be available almost everywhere).
Aside -
Have you ever been to a place without cellphone coverage (and I don't mean because the building's walls are blocking). My digital phone doesn't work in mountainous areas, but my old analog phone seemed to work everywhere. It makes me wish analog was still alive, if only for backup.
Re:Surprised? (Score:4, Informative)
AT&T can't win on the deception since the ads do say the maps are of 3G coverage.
If that confuses potential customers, it's as much AT&T's fault as Verizon's. They both like tossing acronyms around and both enjoy confusing customers with dizzying itemized bills and plans until people just quit listening at the first term they don't understand.
I still don't understand why data isn't data. If I pay for data transfer on their net why does it matter if that comes from a laptop connected to the phone (an extra charge) or from an app running on the phone itself? Are the bits fatter?
Best vs. Better (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
I'll second that; I'm also a T-Mobile customer (for 7 years now) and their customer service is excellent. I sometimes get slightly irritated on the phone with them because they are SO overly nice and friendly. It's almost sickeningly sweet.
Re:Can you hear us now? (Score:3, Informative)
Southwestern Bell + PacBell + SNET + Ameritech = SBC
SBC bought AT&T (LD) and changed its name to AT&T.
AT&T bought BellSouth and at that point owned 100% of Cingular, which was renamed to AT&T.
Therefore,
Southwestern Bell + PacBell + SNET + Ameritech + BellSouth + AT&T (LD) + Cingular = AT&T.
Re:Surprised? (Score:3, Informative)
Becides [sic]Edge is in the '3G' spec, so it should be '3G' too.
I used to work for AT&T Wireless. AT&T has never referred to their EDGE network as 3G; they have always called it 2.5G. I can't link to the document on it as it is on the company intranet and not accessible for public viewing. But, here's a quote from the AT&T website that clearly states that AT&T does not consider EDGE 3G: In areas where the 3G network is not available, customers will continue to receive service on the AT&T EDGE network, when coverage is available. [att.com]