T-Mobile to stop ‘most reliable 5G’ claim after AT&T, Verizon challenge

T-Mobile struck out again in its effort to claim America’s most reliable 5G network after an unsuccessful appeal to an advertising industry review board. T-Mobile said it will follow recommendations from the National Advertising Review Board (NARB) to stop all express and implied claims of having the most reliable 5G network based on data from network testing company umlaut. NARB determined umlaut’s methodology didn’t meet the right criteria to claim most reliable, and it upholds earlier findings by the National Advertising Division (NAD) in separate challenges brought on by competitors AT&T and Verizon in 2021. The review board consolidated the separate cases together for one appeal decision. Specifically, NARB said umlaut’s methods didn’t take into account completion of a data task (or “task completion”) as a metric of reliability, something it says is one of two key components along with the ability to connect to the network. Instead, umlaut’s April 2021 assessment of 5G network reliability evaluated speed and coverage using two different approaches, but NARB pointed out that mobile carriers often promote network on claims of speed, coverage and reliability.