T-Mobile Claims ‘Fastest 4G LTE’ Again After Agreeing to Stop

T-Mobile is once again stating that they have the fastest 4G LTE network in the U.S., after previously agreeing to stop making that claim last week.

On Thursday, the National Advertising Division (NAD) — the advertising industry’s self-regulation body — issued a statement that recommended T-Mobile “discontinue claims that it has the latest 4G LTE network.” In addition, the NAD recommended that T-Mobile discontinue claiming that its LTE network was “newer” than Verizon’s.

Due to several factors, the NAD concluded that the month of crowd-sourced speed tests that T-Mobile used to back up its claim may have been biased in favor of the Uncarrier. Verizon specifically argued that its customers who used the crowd-sourced testing apps, Ookla and OpenSignal, were more likely to have hit their monthly “de-prioritization” threshold than T-Mobile customers.

However, a few days later, in a statement provided to ARS Technica, T-Mobile once again claimed that they had the fastest 4G LTE network in the country.

The carrier said they’d still comply with the NAD recommendation, but only as far as the specific month of data is concerned. In turn, the company said that it has reviewed new data that still proves that it’s the fastest.

“On the fastest LTE network challenge, NAD ruled that the one month of crowd-sourced [data] we submitted (when Verizon launched their unlimited plan) could not be used,” said Janice Kapner, T-Mobile’s senior vice president of corporate communications.

“NAD previously recognized third-party crowd-sourced data as a way to look at network performance, so we looked at the latest results, and verified what we already knew! T-Mobile is still the fastest LTE network and we’ll continue to let consumers know that,” Kapner added. Of particular note is that T-Mobile didn’t specify which specific data it used to re-verify its claim.

It’s not the first time T-Mobile and Verizon have butted heads over network speeds. The Uncarrier has previously criticized Verizon’s reliance on RootMetrics — instead of crowd-sourced platforms — to determine its own LTE speed and reliability.

Verizon, for its part, could still argue that T-Mobile’s new data is similarly flawed. Whether it will remains to be seen.

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