NEW DELHI: The tug-of-war between Airtel and Reliance Jio is becoming curiouser and curiouser. On Monday, RJio had written to the Advertising Standards Council of India against Airtel’s ad claiming its network as the fastest in India, which Jio termed as misleading.
In response, Bharti Airtel Chief Brand Officer, Rajiv
Mathrani said on Tuesday that the company was “rather amused” by the allegations being made against its campaign. “We believe that this is a deliberate attempt to malign our brand and misguide customers through a campaign of misinformation, which is something we now come across on a regular basis, in particular, on social media platforms,” he said.
Airtel also got the backing of Ookla, the broadband speed testing platform, which had named Airtel as the ‘Fastest Mobile Network’ in India based on data from Q3 and Q4 of 2016.
Bharti Airtel Chief Brand
Officer, Rajiv Mathrani said that the company is “rather amused” by the allegations being made against its campaign. “We believe that this is a deliberate attempt to malign our brand and misguide customers through a campaign of misinformation, which is something we now come across on a regular basis, in particular, on social media platforms.”
According to Reliance Jio, the core issue is that the speed test results are attributed to the primary SIM even though the SIM for which the data speed test is conducted is the secondary SIM in the case of dual-SIM phones.
The dispute between the two telcos started with Reliance Jio’s decision to continue its Happy New Year offer, which Airtel termed as ‘anti-competitive’. As the dispute escalated, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India was dragged into it with Airtel alleging the regulator was tactically allowing Jio to continue with its promotional offers in violation of norms.
