The Advertising Standards Council of India has found Bharti Airtel's advertisement, “officially” claiming it to be fastest network, misleading and has asked the telco to modify or withdraw the commercial by 11 April.
Bharti Airtel, however, has contested the findings.
Upholding the complaint filed by rival Reliance Jio Infocom, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) said that TVC was "misleading" and "contravened Chapters" of its Code as well as guidelines on disclaimers clauses.
"We have advised the advertiser to modify appropriately, or to withdraw the said TVC and the website advertisement by 11 April 2017", ASCI said in its order.
Rejecting the findings of the Fast Track Complaints Committee (FTCC) of ASCI, Bharti Airtel said it would file an appeal against it.
"We do not agree with ASCI's decision, and will file an appeal as per guidelines," Bharti Airtel said in a statement.
The country's largest telecom firm said:
Bharti Airtel has come out with TVC, claiming to be India's fastest network based on Ookla's finding. Rival Reliance Jio contested the claim and moved the ad regulator against the commercial.
The ASCI committee observed that "the TVC does not state in the claim itself that the speed results pertain to a specific period only, which was July-December 2016.
Besides awarding Airtel as the fastest for third and the fourth quarter of 2016, Ookla said that the telecom major is still the fastest mobile network.
Ookla said:
The ad regulator also questioned the test methodology of Ookla.
"While the advertiser submitted an Ookla certificate, they did not provide an explicit test methodology to substantiate that the method is robust to capture the sample; and is representative and comparable across operators, geographies and consumers," ASCI observed.
The ASCI committee referred to the TRAI website with respect to the coverage of Airtel vis-a-vis Reliance Jio and noticed that there is a significant gap between geographical dispersion of Airtel and Jio 4G subscribers which could impact the comparison.
"Based on this data, the FTCC concluded that the claim was not adequately substantiated, and the basis of comparison has been so chosen as to bestow artificial advantage to the advertiser," it said.
ASCI said:
"The FTCC considered this representation to be misleading by ambiguity and implication," it added.
ASCI has granted a personal hearing to Reliance Jio Infocom and Bharti Airtel's representatives with the technical expert.
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