Vodafone in the dock over ‘misleading’ 4G adverts

EE says main rival shouldn’t promise a service it has yet to be awarded

Britain’s Vodafone is being reported to the Advertising Standard Authority by arch rival EE amid accusations it is duping customers with ‘misleading’ 4G claims. EE, the country’s biggest mobile operator which owns Orange and T-mobile, stole a seven month march on rivals recently when it was allowed to introduce 4G services using existing spectrum. Others like Vodafone, O2 and Three, will have to wait until around summer 2013 before they too can offer superfast services.
But EE has gone on the attack over Vodafone’s latest £4.5 million marketing campaign promising customers that, if they sign up for a new handset now, they will have to pay only 30 per cent of the rest of the contract should they want to upgrade to a new 4G mobile next year.

EE, owned by France Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, argues however that Vodafone should not promise customers an upgrade option until at least it has a 4G contract with regulator Ofcom and knows exactly what it can, or can’t deliver.

It is calling on Vodafone to drop or change its adverts and is preparing a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority.

As the spat has escalated Vodafone has hit back accusing EE of muddying the waters to hide its own failures in rolling out 4G.

Though EE chief executive Olaf Swantee claims sales are “strong, in “the double-figure thousands,” he has declined to go into detail.

Perhaps more significantly EE is said to have stopped providing data to GFK, the statistics organisation which calculates market share data for the industry on a weekly basis, about the number of new users signing up.

EE itself could be part floated off at the end of 2013 to free up cash, adding to pressures on the firm.

Meanwhile, as the feud continues, Vodafone was today being forced to defend its marketing tactics elsewhere, in BBC TV consumer programme Watchdog Daily, over how it was blitzing Britain with junkmail, by-passing the Mail Preference Service by addressing envelopes to “the occupier” rather than specifically named householders.