The National Advertising Division (NAD) this week recommended Comcast drop or modify certain claims associated with its Internet product for enterprise customers.
In a notice issued on Thursday, the NAD said Comcast should stop claiming that its Business Internet service “has speeds up to 12 times faster than Verizon, AT&T in T-Mobile” in areas where the land-based service AT&T Fiber is available.
In those areas, AT&T Fiber typically offers a broadband Internet product with a speed of at least 100 megabits per second (Mbps) or faster, which run counter to the notion that Comcast’s comparable land-based product is “12 times faster.”
AT&T Fiber is not available in all areas; in some parts of the country, AT&T offers business customers a product called AT&T Internet Air, which utilizes the company’s 4G LTE and 5G wireless networks.
Comcast’s marketing appears to target AT&T Internet Air, but as conveyed, the NAD is concerned that the messaging might be easily confused with AT&T Fiber, too.
For this reason, the NAD suggested Comcast “modify the claim to limit the message to the specific products compared and otherwise avoid conveying the message that AT&T does not have a faster service with speeds more comparable to Comcast’s fastest product’s speeds,” the notice released on Thursday said.
Typically, the NAD opens a probe into brand messaging after a competitor files a complaint against a company. In this instance, AT&T challenged Comcast’s advertisements for business Internet, which appeared on radio, television and via direct mail.
“NAD determined that Comcast’s advertisements did not clearly disclose the exact products being compared,” a spokesperson said this week. “As a result, NAD found that consumers could reasonably understand the challenged advertising as touting Comcast business internet as 12 times faster than all AT&T internet services. In markets where AT&T offers both fiber and 5G internet service, such a message is not supported.”
“NAD concluded that Comcast’s advertising should be limited to the specific services compared in markets where AT&T offers both 5G and fiber internet service and avoid conveying the misleading message that its service is 12x faster than AT&T’s internet service generally,” the spokesperson continued.
The recommendation is limited to markets where Comcast and AT&T offer competing land-based broadband Internet service. Comcast has agreed to comply with NAD’s recommendation, but a spokesperson said the company disagrees that “small business customers would expect the advertised speed comparison to relate to a fiber service rather than the 5G business internet offerings of the three wireless companies together.”
The NAD is part of the BBB National Programs, a not-for-profit, self-regulating body that helps ensure a level playing field among service providers with respect to advertising, marketing, data privacy, dispute resolution and similar matters.
