AT&T Declares Color War on Verizon

AT&T, the giant company with $124 billion in annual sales, has filed a federal lawsuit against its rival, Verizon. The issue: coloring, of the sort that you do in kindergarten.

Specifically, AT&T charges that the “There’s a map for that” commercials from Verizon Wireless are misleading. These plucky ads, which poke fun at the “There’s an app for that” campaign for AT&T’s hottest handset, the iPhone from Apple, display a map with most of the country in red, representing the area covered by Verizon’s fastest 3G data service. This is compared with another map, which has much less geography marked in blue, with the caption “AT&T 3G coverage.”

AT&T’s suit, filed in the Northern District of Georgia (site of its wireless headquarters) says the script and captions of Verizon’s commercial are correct and the map accurately describes where AT&T’s 3G network is available. The problem, it says, is what is on the rest of the map: white.
In any case, AT&T suggests that this implies that it doesn’t offer service of any sort in the white areas, when in fact it does offer slower service.

The first version of Verizon’s ads in fact said that customers who weren’t in the 3G area were “out of touch.” When AT&T complained, that language was changed, and the words “Voice and data service available outside 3G coverage area” were superimposed on the screen.

AT&T argues that even the modified ads are misleading.