Photo Credit: William Ross via Flickr.
Photo Credit: William Ross via Flickr.

Sprint will no longer claim to have a “brand new” network, after an industry watchdog found some of its advertising to be misleading.

The recommendations being made today were issued by the National Advertising Division (NAD), which is overseen by the Council of Better Business Bureaus. The investigation came about as a result of complaints filed by its closest competitor, T-Mobile, which has made it a goal to overtake Sprint to become the third-largest carrier in the U.S.

Sprint told GeekWire today it has already phased out most of the language at issue, and will remove or revise some of its claims going forward.

In a statement, T-Mobile unsurprisingly celebrated the findings: “As an advocate for wireless consumers in America, T-Mobile commends the National Advertising Division’s decision finding that Sprint’s advertising claims were misleading.”

The investigation looked into a number of claims made by Sprint involving its network and improvements in customer satisfaction. Phrases included: “America’s Newest Network, built from the ground up,” and “Sprint is the most improved U.S. company in customer satisfaction, across all 43 industries, over the last six years.”

“We respectfully disagree with the NAD’s conclusions that our advertising was in any way unsupported or misleading,” said a Sprint spokeswoman, in a statement. “We continue to believe that our advertising truthfully conveyed the many customer improvements brought by our rip-and-replace and ongoing network enhancements, as well as our improvement in customer satisfaction scores over the last six years. We respect the self-regulatory process, and we will follow the NAD’s recommendations in our advertising going forward.”

In investigating the claims, the advertising division said they took into account whether Sprint’s current network contains no portion of its existing network, and whether improvements were made more recently than its competitors. It found that Sprint’s claims conveyed an “overly broad message” to consumers.

“NAD was not persuaded that a network could be termed ‘newest’ simply because its modernization efforts involved dismantling an old network as opposed to upgrading an existing network,” it said.

NAD also recommended that Sprint stop claiming to have “the most improved U.S. company in customer satisfaction, across all 43 industries, over the last six years.” It found that consumers may interpret that as as a continued year-to-year improvement when that was not the case.

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