NAD's Latest Telecom Denigration Crackdown

In the latest of a string of heated telecom advertising disputes, the National Advertising Division (NAD) delivered a victory to T-Mobile US, Inc. ("T-Mobile") in its challenge of claims made by Charter Communications Inc. ("Charter"). Charter's claims involved a series of television commercials and website advertising insinuating that T-Mobile's home internet service was slow, spotty, and glitchy—and more generally an untenable option for a typical family. T-Mobile alleged that these claims were false and denigrating. NAD, unsurprisingly, agreed with the challenger.

NAD's Charter case is reminiscent of a slew of other recent telecom cases involving denigrating depictions of competing internet services. Readers may recall, for example, NAD's Xfinity decision issued earlier this month. There, NAD recommended that Comcast modify its Xfinity commercials that depicted a competing internet carrier as slow, unreliable, and prone to subpar performance. The same result