Airtel and Jio lock horns over alleged misleading ads

Ever since Reliance has launched its Jio services, there has been a war of words between market leader Bharti Airtel and Reliance Jio Infocomm.

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While there have been statements and complaints in the past, the fresh issue involves an advertisement campaign that endorses Airtel as the fastest network.

Both companies have accused each other of misleading customers with ads.

Jio in its accusations has said that there is no guarantee that the speed which is attributed to Airtel by internet metrics firm Ookla belongs to Airtel, thus rendering Airtel’s recent ad calling itself fastest network in India as fraudulent.

Airtel, however, says that Jio is maligning its brand image by spreading misinformation about its advertisement.

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Ookla, supporting Airtel, has said that its speed test results were based on data from the third and fourth quarter of 2016.

"We believe that this (Jio's allegation) is a deliberate attempt to malign our brand and misguide customers through a campaign of misinformation, which is something we now come across on a regular basis, in particular, on social media platforms," said Rajiv Mathrani, chief brand officer at Bharti Airtel.

On Monday, Jio termed Ookla's speed test to be false and misleading, knocking the doors of advertising watchdog, the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI), demanding withdrawal of the ad campaign. Not only this, Jio also sent a legal notice to Ookla, saying that it falsely certified Bharti Airtel to be India's fastest mobile carrier based on unreliable results.

A Reliance spokesperson clarified the reason behind these allegations. As per the statement, the speed test results are attributed to the primary SIM in the case of dual-SIM phones, regardless of the SIM that delivers the data speed.

"In India, more than 90% of 4G phones are dual-SIM. Therefore, there is no guarantee that the speed which is attributed to Airtel is of the Airtel data network. We are surprised that Ookla in its press release has not talked about this issue even though they had acknowledged the blunder to us earlier," said the statement.

Ookla, however, said that they took dual SIM information into consideration while doing the speed test.

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