Vodacom “fastest network” claim okayed
The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) has ruled that Vodacom has the right to claim to have the fastest mobile network in South Africa – but isn’t allowed to say the same of its 3G network.
Vodacom’s recent advertising campaigns used the tagline “the fastest network for smartphones”, as well as stating that the operator had the best and widest 3G network in the country.
MTN ASA complaint against Vodacom
MTN lodged a complaint with the ASA, saying that Vodacom’s “fastest network” claim is unsubstantiated, dishonest and misleading.
MTN argued that its network outperformed Vodacom’s network in some areas during certain periods.
“The [fastest network for smartphones] claim implies that Vodacom outperforms all competitors in all regions at all times, which is not the case,” MTN said.
In addition to the complaint, MTN lodged another complaint against Vodacom’s ads, saying that the claim of “fastest 3G” and “widest 3G” network were also false.
In its case, MTN explain why and how speed tests and results can be manipulated, and why Vodacom would not be able to substantiate its claim of having the fastest 3G network in general unless it were qualified to limit it to a specific geographic region, device, or package.
Vodacom shows proof
Vodacom showed evidence of its superior network performance based on research from Michael Charnas of Catalyst Research & Services, and statistics from Ookla.
Vodacom highlighted that the research they presented is filtered for smartphones only, which therefore applies to its advertising claims.
In ruling on the fastest smartphone network in SA, the ASA sided with Vodacom.
The ASA found that the Catalyst report confirmed that Vodacom’s network outperformed its competitors on both download and upload speeds for smartphones.
“Vodacom outperformed its competitors by a significant margin on average download and upload speeds between October 2012 and June 2013,” the ASA said.
The ASA also noted that Vodacom outperformed its competitors when looking at Ookla’s Speedtest.net statistics.
The ASA subsequently dismissed MTN’s complaint, and ruled that Vodacom’s claim to have the “fastest network for smartphones” is substantiated.
However, in ruling on “the fastest 3G network” claims, the ASA sided with MTN because of the fact that speed test results used multiple technologies, not only 3G, and could not reflect a single technology only.
According to the ASA, Vodacom failed to show that, when comparing its 3G network to all other 3G networks operational in South Africa, its 3G network was the fastest – “exclusive of other types of networks such as 2G, voice, and LTE as referred to in the papers”.
Effectively the ASA said that “fastest network” is acceptable but “fastest 3G network” not, and ruled that Vodacom should withdraw the claim from its advertising.
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