The current court battle between the nation's two largest wireless carriers, AT&T and Verizon Wireless, involves issues that are more than just a matter of black and white (or maybe that should be blue and white?).
The dispute seems straightforward enough on the surface. Essentially AT&T claims that the Verizon Wireless ads for Motorola's Droid are misleading, and that the blue-and-white maps used in the ads falsely indicate that AT&T has gaps in its wireless coverage.
More specifically, AT&T charges that Verizon's ads wrongly suggest that the white-colored coverage areas outside of AT&T fast 3G service get no coverage whatsoever from AT&T -- when, in fact, most of these are covered with slower 2G service.
But the plot thickens. First of all, Verizon and AT&T aren't the only wireless carriers involved here. Verizon is also publicizing maps that wholehearte
By the way, Verizon's maps also quite conveniently leave out 4G, a higher speed level that neither AT&T nor Verizon is expected to reach until 2010. Meanwhile, Sprint this week added ten more cities to its finally emerging 4G WiMax coverage.
So if there's going to be a multicolored map out there, it really needs more colors, doesn't it? Maybe red could be used to represent 4G? Or what about purple? But even if Verizon -- or anyone else -- ever put together a more multihued map, it'd need to be redrawn each time one of the networks steps to a higher speed in a new metro area. Wow. That could call for a lot of map-making. (Where are Google Maps in all of this? Just kidding here.)
AT&T also says its research shows that a lot of folks misunderstand Verizon's maps. According to AT&T, when consumers view it
But do most consumers really care about 2G, 3G and 4G anyway, and do they know the difference? I don't know of any research results that answer these questions, which are more widely significant.
Verizon's Droid ads are so unusual that it's quite likely they'll stick in a lot of people's minds for some time. But will the ads really spur many current iPhone users to dump their devices, pay hefty contract cancellation fees to AT&T, invest in Droids, and ink new two-year 3G service contracts with Verizon? I think not, particularly with 4G service coming down the pike.
I predict that Verizon's pitch will be most successful with two groups: brand-new 3G users, who've never bought an iPhone anyway; and a relatively subset of current iPhone users that are particularly mobile. If you spend most of your time in a limited geographical area -- whether that's New York City, the Silicon Valley, or Orlando, Florida -- do you really care whether AT&T will give you 3G coverage at a Colorado ski lodge, or a convention at a dude ranch in some other remote locale?
These heavily mobile folks are also especially likely to be lured by the Droid's built-in, ready-to-use, and Google Maps-integrated turn-by-turn GPS voice navigation -- which to me seems like one of its biggest selling points. But Verizon's ad blitz is only going to last if the courts let that happen, anyway.