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Telus sues Rogers for ads of being the “fastest” network
Back in January Rogers filed a complaint with the Advertising Standards Canada (ASC) stating that Bell Mobility went against the Canadian Code by placing the statement “fastest and largest network across North America” in one of their ads.
Today, TELUS joined the game and filed a suit with the Supreme Court of British Columbia and sued Rogers for apparently misleading the Canadian public with some of their ads stating they are the “fastest and most reliable” network.
We reached out to TELUS for further explanation and Shawn Hall, TELUS spokesperson stated:
“TELUS’ sole interest in filing this suit is to have a competitor remove a false, misleading, and harmful claim from their advertising. In light of our recent launch of Canada’s largest 3G+ network, Rogers has no network advantage and they should not be misleading the Canadian public with false superiority claims.
Making a big claim in bold type and then trying to use fine print to restrict the claim to a comparison against just our old network and select criteria is clearly misleading to the public. We kindly asked them to remove the claim recently, and they refused. This lawsuit, while unfortunate, is our only recourse.”
In response to these claims, Rogers sent us a note with their comment: “We stand behind our claims. All of our internal and third party external testing since 2007 has consistently demonstrated that we have the most reliable network. We’ve established our reliability over time with millions of customers on our network. Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance. We look forward to vigorously defending our position in court.”
Discussion
12 comments for “Telus sues Rogers for ads of being the “fastest” network”
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Yay! Lawyers are fun!
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I have been with Rogers for 10plus years I can say they are not what they claim.When Telus gets service in Sask/Man I will leave Rogers for good NEVER to return ever.I can say from lots of experience they are Canadas most unreliable network.Slower than the second coming.The reason Apple gave up on Rogers,Two many droped calls,Very poor service,To SLOW with HSPA roll out.Apple iPhones log every droped call,Transer info to Apple when you sink your phone with iTunes.
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Go and Get’em Telus!!
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Instead of Rogers always talking about being the best or the fastest or the most reliable based on “third party company” surveys, they should listen to their customers who actually use their service on a daily basis and then come up with such claims for their ads. They really are not as reliable or as clear or as fast. I get better clearer and more reliable service with Telus than I did with Rogers back in 2002, and even recently when I was using my friend’s phone. I’m glad Telus is taking it on themselves to finally set the record straight.
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A good waste of taxpayers’ money in the courts.
Why don’t the telecom companies try and do something productive for once.
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there has never been reliable service on the TransCanada Highway just west of Calgary. Rogers has had a decade to provide reliable coverage there… and did nothing. But suddenly I do see coverage: from Telus and Bell.
And in Invermere, BC, Calgary’s cottage country, Rogers has only ever provided glacially slow Edge coverage (no faster than dial-up). Now Telus has 3G coverage all up and down the Columbia River Valley.
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Rogers is definitely behaving poorly here. If their ads aren’t illegal they are definitely unethical.
Originally, Rogers “most reliable claim” was related to dropped call rate and call clarity. The original studies themselves were dubious because Rogers hand picked the areas to be compared, which were restricted to just a handful of urban centres. The studies compared Rogers HSPA/GSM with Telus/Bell CDMA.
Recently as the Telus/Bell HSPA launch approached Rogers changed their legal wording so that “most reliable” suddenly meant session completion rate when data browsing. Continuing to use the same “most reliable” claim but completely changing its meaning with legal jargon was just an attempt to continue conveying the same prior message (dropped calls and clarity) while legally not making such a claim.
Now Rogers has released new advertising and website pages that portray “most reliable” as meaning dropped calls, call clarity and session completion rate. Again as compared only to Telus/Bell’s CDMA networks. Rogers network is no longer the fastest, its not the largest and they haven’t properly studied whether they indeed have any better dropped call, clarity or session completion rates as compared to the Telus/Bell HSPA network. Rogers should not be making any such claims.
Rogers argument that Telus has not provided any stats to prove their claim is a moot point. As Rogers is the company making the claim publicly then they must be the company providing evidence of truth. It is not Telus’ responsibility to disprove public claims made by Rogers. Indeed it is Rogers responsibility to prove their claims.
It is rare for court cases of this nature to actually rule in favour of the complainant. Instead, it is more likely that Rogers will quietly change their advertising or even move into a new campaign naturally. I don’t foresee a big legal win for Telus, but at least they will get a big PR win. Its just too bad that Rogers is forcing Telus to occupy court time rather than behaving ethically from the get go.
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the problem is very similar to AT&T sueing Verizon for pointing out the fact about AT&T coverage in US. What Rogers customers should take them to courts for fault and outright misleading promises of network coverage. My personal experience with Roger promises in the past almost cost me my life in an accident along the transcanada high between sault ste. marie and white river.It’s rather unfortunate for me to find out that Rogers have no services coverage in this part of the highway. Rogers as a company should be responsible and accountable when a emergency situation arise. Simply said, we as clients to Rogers should be able to get services in time of emergency. This is the soul reason why I vow not give Roger my business.
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I was with Rogers For 1 year, and i must say it was terrible. could never get reception where i lived and I’m Much happier with telus and i’ve been with them since 2006, I’m not a Telus Fan Boy just stating the facts of my experience
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According to Rogers: “Telus has not submitted any data on their network performance. We look forward to vigorously defending our position in court”
You just blew your case by admitting that you have not reviewed your competitors data so you can’t legally make the claim.
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I haven’t read much about it yet, but Telus’ lawyers may have jumped the gun here. The wireless netowrk of telus is nothing to right home about just yet. Got a new iphone last Friday and haven’t been able to receive calls from Bell Mobility, Bell Aliant or Telus Mobility since. No one will give me a date this will be fixed and I am apparently not the only one having this problem according to Telus. Maybe they should have waited a bit before they spoke about the reliability?
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Erik Reply:
November 19th, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I don’t know if that is because of Telus and Bell, or your special Iphone. All other 3g+ phones have been working great.
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