Claims brand hurts Sprint’s Legit 5G
AT&T recently started branding their phones with their 5G Evolution (or 5GE from here on out) brand. The problem? It’s not really 5G at all; it’s essentially 4G with some optimizations and add-ons to make it a bit faster. Naturally, their competitors responded in their own ways. T-Mobile mocked it; Verizon wrote a letter. Sprint, on the other hand, is taking them to court in the hopes of getting an injunction to stop AT&T from using the 5GE tag on devices or advertising.
Sprint claims that the branding will, in all likelihood, damage the reputation of legitimate 5G, which Sprint is currently working on bringing to market with their phones. And they can prove it; they polled consumers on it, with 54% of those polled stating that they believed 5GE as being the same as, or better than, true 5G devices. And 43% believe that an AT&T phone bought today will be 5G capable.
AT&T shot a statement of their own out in the wake of impending litigation:
We understand why our competitors don’t like what we are doing, but our customers love it. We introduced 5G Evolution more than two years ago, clearly defining it as an evolutionary step to standards-based 5G. 5G Evolution and the 5GE indicator simply let customers know when their device is in an area where speeds up to twice as fast as standard LTE are available. That’s what 5G Evolution is, and we are delighted to deliver it to our customers.
AT&T, via Engadget
We will fight this lawsuit while continuing to deploy 5G Evolution in addition to standards-based mobile 5G. Customers want and deserve to know when they are getting better speeds. Sprint will have to reconcile its arguments to the FCC that it cannot deploy a widespread 5G network without T-Mobile while simultaneously claiming in this suit to be launching “legitimate 5G technology imminently.”
Source: Engadget
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