AT&T has fired back against Verizon Wireless, telling customers its rivals’ recent ads “are so blatantly false and misleading, that we want to set the record straight about AT&T’s wireless data coverage.”
The letter to AT&T customers claims that it covers 97 percent of the U.S. population and has twice the number of smartphones than Verizon.
The public rebuttal comes a day after the carrier amended its court case against Verizon, asking the federal court to restrain holiday ads attacking AT&T or describing the iPhone as a “misfit” due to poor 3G availability. The lawsuit originally took issue with Verizon’s “there’s a map for that” ads critical of AT&T coverage.
AT&T told the court Verizon’s latest advertising salvo showing the iPhone on the island of misfit toys “falsely communicates that the iPhone is a broken device because it cannot browse the Web or download applications when outside of AT&T’s depicted coverage area.”
During the past weekend, Verizon launch a series of Christmas-theme ads attacking AT&T coverage for iPhone owners. Along with the island of misfit toys ad, the carrier introduced “Blue Christmas” and “Elves.” The ads focused more on AT&T rather than being critical of the iPhone itself. Verizon, which also introduced the Android-based Droid series of smartphones, had attacked the iPhone in its “IDon’t” ads promoting the handset.
[Via AppleInsider, Electronista and AT&T letter]
