Cell C loses ‘Vodacom Red’ substantiation ruling
Vodacom unveiled its new red branding three weeks ago, giving the company a distinct Vodafone look and feel.
Cell C was quick to react, and launched an extensive television, print, online and radio advertising campaign poking fun at Vodacom’s new branding.
Vodacom was not happy about some of Cell C’s claims, submitting to the Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) that Cell C should substantiate their claims regarding being SA’s number one network, having the fastest broadband speeds in the country and having 3 to 5 times the coverage per tower.
The ASA ruled against Cell C, saying that the claims mentioned above are not substantiated and ordered Cell C to remove their advertising campaign with immediate effect.
Shortly after this ruling Cell C submitting new information which included a presentation by the Elisa Corporation, a mobile operator in Finland, which shows that 900MHz towers are indeed superior in terms of coverage, indoor coverage and HSPA throughput.
Cell C explained that the new information should substantiate the claims that its HSPA+ 900 MHz network covers 3-5 times more ground and is better indoors with a 10-20 decibel gain.
Vodacom responded arguing that as a commercial operator, similar to Cell C or Vodacom, Elisa is not independent and the presentation was not a factual document with substantiated claims but rather a generic case study of a specific network deployment project in Finland, and hence does not qualify as an accepted ASA source.
“Cell C attempts to convey the perception that this presentation [Elisa Corporation Report] is a detailed technical study on the performance of UMTS-900 networks in relation to UMTS-2100 networks and can be used to substantiate highly technical parameters and assumptions, which is not the case,” Vodacom said.
Vodacom added that they currently have 4300 3G towers covering 87% of the South African population, which is significantly more than Cell C’s 1550 3G base stations with 43% population coverage.
The ASA was not convinced that Cell C’s new submissions substantiate its previous claims, and ruled that the previous ruling remains binding.
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