• by P.J. Bednarski  @pjbtweet, December 22, 2020

An advertising claims review board has recommended T-Mobile discontinue or change its claims of “superior reliability” -- but also left the wireless company with a separate, narrower win against challenges to language in a video.

The National Advertising Review Board (NARB) on Monday ruled on an appeal T-Mobile made on an earlier ruling. The initial complaint came from one of T-Mobile’s main rivals, Verizon Communications.

At issue was “science guy” TV personality Bill Nye explaining 5G for T-Mobile in a four-minute video available online.

In it, he explained the differences between the basic signals 5G can run on. The explanation tends to slime high-band transmission -- the kind Verizon has touted -- which is fast, but has extremely limited short signal strength. In the Nye video, he shows a bus-stop bench and suggests a 5G high-band signal might barely cover it all.

NARB says the video also implies T-Mobile’s 5G signal is more reliable than competitors’ 4G signal and that no 5G service is more reliable than T-Mobile’s. The panel said T-Mobile should stop those kinds of statements.

It also said T-Mobile should quit implying  “that its 5G service is generally available in locations that have traditionally been challenging for cellular service, or disclose, clearly and conspicuously, the typical performance of T-Mobile’s 5G network in those locations.”

More pointedly it said, T-Mobile should discontinue claims and a demonstration “that imply that other carriers’ 5G coverage is so limited in any area as to cover only the space taken up by a single bench.”

In a separate ruling, NARB said T-Mobile’s claims of “superior coverage” did not imply overall network superiority, overturning an earlier decision by the National Ad Division (NAD) a kind of lower court that ruled against T-Mobile in August.

In a statement, T-Mobile said it “appreciates that the panel agreed that T-Mobile can continue to advertise its superior 5G coverage without qualification.”

Both NARB and NAD are units of BBB National Programs, which provides third-party accountability, disputing resolution programs for a variety of industries to help them regulate themselves. The programs allow companies to resolve problems without tempting federal agencies to take action instead.

Dealing with T-Mobile, Verizon and AT&T keeps NAD and NARB busy. In 2020, a spokeswoman said, the boards had dealt with 18 separate complaints by and about those three companies.