{"id":153075,"date":"2016-01-27T09:01:22","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T07:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=153075"},"modified":"2016-01-27T09:02:33","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T07:02:33","slug":"vodacom-nailed-over-its-4glte-coverage-claim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/153075-vodacom-nailed-over-its-4glte-coverage-claim.html","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom nailed over its 4G\/LTE coverage claim"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Advertising Standards Authority of South Africa (ASA) has found that Vodacom\u2019s &#8220;4G\/LTE coverage in remote areas&#8221; claim is\u00a0unsubstantiated.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom\u2019s Summer advertising campaign featured an advert where a pastor ran out of fuel in a remote area of the country, leaving a wedding party waiting for him.<\/p>\n<p>Armed with a phone receiving\u00a0a 4G signal, the pastor conducted the wedding via a video call.<\/p>\n<p>One consumer was not happy with the advertisement, highlighting that Vodacom does not have extensive 4G or LTE coverage in rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>In his complaint to the ASA, he used Vodacom\u2019s coverage map to show that the operator does not have 4G or LTE coverage in any remote areas.<\/p>\n<p>Vodacom responded through its advertising agency Ogilvy and Mather, arguing that the company has extensive 3G and LTE coverage in South Africa.<\/p>\n<p>It stated\u00a0that Vodacom covers remote and rural areas with 627 4G\/LTE towers, serving at least one million LTE users.<\/p>\n<p>The ASA was not convinced, stating\u00a0that Vodacom\u2019s advertisement exaggerated the extent to which it could offer 4G\/LTE services in remote and rural areas.<\/p>\n<p>The ASA found that Vodacom\u2019s advertisement was misleading, and ordered Vodacom to withdraw it with immediate effect.<\/p>\n<p>This follows a <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/150321-vodacom-nailed-for-unsubstantiated-4g-claim.html\">December 2015 ruling by the ASA<\/a><\/strong> in which Vodacom was instructed to remove the term 4G from its marketing material.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/4iBZpTdDNTs\" width=\"630\" height=\"354\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">More on Vodacom and the ASA<\/h3>\n<p><a title=\"Cell C faces off with Vodacom, MTN over 4G network claims\" href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/14869-cell-c-faces-off-with-vodacom-mtn-over-4g-network-claims.html\"><strong>Cell C faces off with Vodacom, MTN over 4G network claims<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Vodacom has been hit with another adverse ASA ruling over its 4G\/LTE coverage claim in its Summer advertising campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":110464,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[351,35,2490,41],"class_list":["post-153075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-asa","tag-headline","tag-lte","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153075"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153075"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153079,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153075\/revisions\/153079"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}