Chicago Sun-Times: Sprint Touts Its Cell Coverage in Ads But Tells FCC It Can’t Match Competitors

Chicago Sun-Times: Sprint Touts Its Cell Coverage in Ads But Tells FCC It Can’t Match Competitors

The discrepancy is “nothing new in the sense of filing one thing with the FCC and telling the customers something else,” says Yosef Getachew of the watchdog group Common Cause, which is among advocacy groups that are fighting to block the merger.

You’ve probably seen the TV commercials with “Paul,” the cellphone carrier pitchman who used to work for Verizon but now touts Sprint.

He used to ask, “Can you hear me now?” on Verizon’s commercials but, since 2016, has been boasting to consumers that “Sprint’s reliability is now within 1 percent of Verizon” and its cell service costs less.

Sprint paints a similar picture for consumers on its website, which shows a U.S. coverage map blanketed in yellow to show Sprint customers can get cellphone service almost anywhere.

But now that Sprint, the nation’s No. 4 cellphone carrier, is pushing for government approval to merge with its bigger rival, No. 3 T-Mobile, it’s told the Federal Communication Commission a different story. …

The discrepancy is “nothing new in the sense of filing one thing with the FCC and telling the customers something else,” says Yosef Getachew of the watchdog group Common Cause, which is among advocacy groups that are fighting to block the merger.

In the past, big mobile carriers complained to the FCC that “net neutrality” —guaranteeing equal access to the Internet — made it harder for them to be able to invest more in their networks. At the same time, Getachew says, they boasted to consumers about all of the improvements they were making.