AT&T’s (T) bid to acquire No.4 wireless carrier T-Mobile USA failed spectacularly in late 2011 after the Justice Department sued to block the merger. There is clearly no love lost between AT&T and its former acquisition target, as the carrier on Thursday took out a full-page ad in several large newspapers slamming T-Mobile’s network. “The truth about T-Mobile’s network compared to AT&T,” the ad reads. “2x more dropped calls, 2x more failed calls, 50% slower download speeds.” The ad, pictured below, ran in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and in USA Today on Thursday.
“Wow. Looks like we struck a chord,” T-Mobile CMO Mike Sievert said in a statement to Bloomberg. “AT&T doth protest too much. Glad they’re spending their money to print our name.”
An AT&T spokesman told Bloomberg that the ad was printed in response to T-Mobile’s long-running campaign that highlights its 4G network speeds.
“T-Mobile’s advertising is a combination of misguided and just plain wrong,” AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel said. “[The ad is] just a friendly reminder of the fact that independent third-party testing says AT&T’s network delivers faster speeds and fewer dropped calls than them.”
“Don’t be fooled by their misleading claims,” AT&T’s ad concludes. “For the better network experience, count on AT&T.”
The full ad follows below.
