Vodacom achieves the impossible
In what is a first in South Africa, Vodacom has successfully argued for and against using the term 4G for technologies which do not meet the technical requirements of 4G.
In December 2015, the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) ruled that Vodacom must remove its 4G claim from its marketing material.
The ruling followed a complaint from Cell C, which argued that Vodacom’s use of 4G to describe its LTE network was misleading.
Vodacom successfully appealed the ASA ruling, using expert opinions to argue that “4G is not formally defined”, and that “LTE is a 4G technology and is named by the ITU as an example”.
Vodacom further showed that its LTE network provideed significantly better speeds and latency than its 3G network.
The successful appeal alone would not have been exceptional, but considering the historic battle regarding the term 4G, it is nothing short of astonishing.
In 2010, Vodacom lodged a successful complaint against Cell C for marketing its new HSPA+ network as 4G.
Cell C argued that many operators and other companies described their HSPA+ and LTE networks as 4G, and that its HSPA+ network provided significantly better speeds than its 3G network.
Vodacom fought against these claims, arguing that the ITU definition shows 4G excludes HSPA+ and LTE.
It is not often that a company successfully win cases for and against the same action, using opposite claims and arguments.
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