We’re all used to crazy advertising about telecom products that make industry folks shake their heads—many of the ads about 5G come to mind. Most people don’t realize that carriers in the industry routinely challenge the claims made by competitors to force them to modify or drop deceptive ads.

Most of the largest corporations in the country belong to the National Advertising Division (NAD), which is part of the Better Business Bureau and arbitrates disputes about advertising between participants in the plan. Participation is voluntary, but corporations join the effort because the arbitration process through NAD is far cheaper than using the courts to settle disputes. Corporations almost always comply with the recommendations of NAD. The NAD monitors national advertising campaigns in all media and tries to enforce standards of truth and accuracy—a high standard for advertising.

Charter recently challenged advertising that claimed AT&T’s business broadband services on fiber are better than business broadband services provided by cable companies. It was an interesting challenge because Charter disputed a number of the claims made by AT&T in the ads.

In the first dispute, AT&T claimed it was ‘up to 20 times faster’ than cable broadband. NAB agreed that the upload speeds on AT&T’s gigabit product are up to 20 times faster than a gigabit product from the cable companies but found that AT&T’s wording of the claim made it sound like all AT&T products are 20 times faster than the equivalent cable company broadband products.

AT&T also claimed that its prices are half the price of cable broadband. The NAB found that the prices for AT&T’s top business products are half the price of the equivalent products from the cable companies but again sided with Charter because it said that the AT&T ad made it sound like all AT&T broadband products are half the price of cable company broadband.

The AT&T ads made the claim that AT&T’s fiber broadband is superior to cable company broadband. NAB found that while there was a big difference in upload speeds between the two products, both technologies’ download speeds are equivalent. NAB felt that most business customers care more about download speed than upload speed and sided against AT&T’s claim that its broadband is superior.

AT&T ads claimed that the upload speeds of cable companies are insufficient to support video conference, surging, streaming, and gaming and the NAB said there was not enough evidence to support that claim. NAD did support AT&T’s claim that fiber is superior for uploading large files.

In the ruling that will rile fiber fans, the NAD said the record did not substantiate a claim that AT&T fiber provides ‘better internet’ than cable broadband. But the NAD supported AT&T’s claim that it provides a consistent speed, even at peak times.

AT&T told the NAD that it respectfully disagreed with all of the negative findings, but the company agreed to stop using the disputed claims. I would guess that AT&T will continue to make many of these claims but will be more specific and less generic.

Many of you might not realize that the big ISPs also often challenge advertising claims made by municipal and other smaller ISPs. Such complaints generally come from counsel for the big ISPs and demand that a smaller ISP stop the disputed advertising. The process is threatening since small ISPs don’t want to engage in expensive legal disputes. I’ve known a few small ISPs that ignored such claims and were never sued, but I don’t know that there is any way to know the motivation of a big ISP in a given complaint. One of my clients who ignored such a claim said that fighting with the big ISP in the papers over an issue was the best advertising he could ever have wished for.