Airtel Ordered to Take Down its “Fastest Network” Campaign by ASCI

The Reliance Jio and Airtel spat over the latter’s claim for having the “fastest 4G network” in the country finally has a conclusion. The Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has ordered Airtel to withdraw the TVC and the website advertisement by 11th April 2017. The complaint registered by Reliance Jio was reviewed on 29th March and the Fast Track Complaints Committee (FTCC) found quite a few contradictions leading to this decision.

As stated by the FTCC, the Airtel TVC fails to clearly state a few of the Terms and Conditions mentioned on its website. One of these is the fact that the speed results account for only a specific period i.e. Q3-Q4 2016. Furthermore, the commercial doesn’t equally favor both the competing networks and in fact, shows poor signal strength for the other service provider during the speed comparison scene. Additionally, Airtel says that the advertisement is not solely about the 4G technology, whereas the TVC has visuals only with reference to 4G. Hence, the board came to a result which holds the TVC misleading by ambiguity and implication.

FTCC’s claims also included questions regarding the certificate issued by Ookla as it doesn’t state any methodology which verifies the robustness of their tests based on the wide range of geographies and consumers. Moreover, based on what data is available on TRAI’s official website, FTCC stated there’s a significant gap between Geographical dispersion of Airtel and Jio 4G subscribers and therefore, the comparison is considered largely biased towards Airtel. Additionally, as there’s no involvement of any official government organization or “recognized authority” such as TRAI itself, FTCC says the commercial “exploits consumers’ lack of knowledge.”

Based on these conflicts, FTCC has legally ordered Airtel to either appropriately modify or withdraw the advertisement completely by 11th April 2017.

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