Misleading advertisement campaigns by Airtel

Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) has asked Airtel in April 2017 to modify its advertisements as it is not the “Fastest 4G network”. Airtel has been using the results of Ookla Speed Test to validate their statement. Though it has been established that Ookla speed test results are questionable, as their methodology is greatly flawed when it comes to Android dual SIM devices, which even they admitted to.

 

Airtel stopped telecasting their “Fastest 4G network” advertisements and consequently started a new campaign TVC campaign “next-gen’s smart network”, that focused on smartphone experience rather than speed.

The new campaign is in full swing, concentrating on their services like, anti-virus, payments banks, and others. Suddenly in June, Airtel is again running the Ookla “fastest 4G network” ads on Television.

Also, Airtel was rated as India's fastest 4G network by Ookla's Speed test in January this year. But the official certificate given to Airtel is one year old, which makes it very much irrelevant in June 2017.

Airtel has been a violator of ASCI rules since forever. In 2015, Airtel claimed that if somebody’s mobile 4G network is faster than it will pay mobile bills of that for their life. In 2016, Airtel said that it is the best mobile network in a TVC campaign. And now in 2017, Airtel claims to be “fastest 4G network” , “free calls and data worth 9000”.

All this is fishy and gives rise to so many questions. The reason is evident to those who wish to see, “TRAI Speed Test results”. For the Last 4 Months, Airtel has been performing poorly according to the TRAI reports, yet they want to establish the perception about being “India’s Fastest Network”. Even the report from OpenSignal was unable to establish the claim of Airtel about being the Fastest network.

Airtel is coming across too desperate to be known as fastest network. It is trying to fool people by running such advertisements, consciously overruling the authority’s decision. Airtel is not limiting to a TVC campaign but also bringing it to the internet via youtube and other online platforms.

According to TRAI reports, Jio has been India’s fastest 4G network since Dec-2016 with average speeds reaching between 16-19Mbps. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) collects and computes data download speed with the help of its MySpeed app on a real-time basis.

For the month of April, Jio has recorded an all-time high download speed of 19.12 Mbps. The Jio-Airtel conflict has been known to all and such a move by Airtel is a way to target Jio users in market. Jio on the other hand has maintained silence on this till now and just want the misleading ad campaigns to be stopped.