T-Mobile does not shy away from trumpeting all of its achievements at the expense of its competitors (and they also name said competitors) at times. The past couple of years have seen the battle of 5G (that’s not really 5G oftentimes) among the carriers and T-Mobile has been pretty vocal about theirs, claiming that theirs is the best. But now an advertising board panel is recommending that they stop hyping up their 5G network as there’s still no basis for claiming superior 5G.
A panel of the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) has released a list of recommendations for T-Mobile that is basically telling them to stop bragging about their 5G network. They should stop implying that 5G is more reliable than 4G and that theirs is the most reliable of all the 5G networks now. They should discontinue also claiming that their 5G service is available in places where it’s hard to get cellular service.
The last recommendation is that they should stop claiming and even demonstrating that other carriers’ 5G coverage is limited. All of these claims that they usually make are difficult to prove since it’s hard to quantify those things. They have to be careful when they criticize Verizon’s high-band 5G Ultra Wideband network, although that has also been under scrutiny lately as it slows down some devices’ 4G capabilities.
However, these are not actually orders but more like recommendations. T-Mobile is not legally obligated to follow these since it comes from a division that doesn’t really have the power to enforce them. But it looks like they are planning to comply with the suggestions and not wait until an actual legal agency will compel them to discontinue all of the 5G boasting that they’ve been doing, at least those that cannot be qualified.
T-Mobile has actually done a good job of building their 5G network and so they can talk about how widely available their network is. But they will have to be careful from now on about claims that cannot be quantified just yet.
