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Cable, DSL battle gets personal
Updated: Wed, May 03 10:00 AM EDT
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by Marilynn Wheeler, ZDNet News
Pac Bell will add a disclaimer to its 'Web hog' DSL ad campaign
after receiving threats of a lawsuit.
Pacific Bell will add a disclaimer to its popular "Web hog" DSL ad
campaign after receiving threats of a false-advertising lawsuit from
cable modem provider Excite@Home, a company spokesman said
Tuesday.
That's not enough, countered Excite@Home spokeswoman Alison
Bowman, who declined to rule out legal action.
"We feel a footnote like that is really helpful to consumers only if what
they're saying is unambiguous," she said. "We feel [the ad's] 'Always
fast, never shared' tagline is misleading to consumers."
John Britton of Pac Bell said Excite@Home was being disingenous at
best and, at worst, ignorant in claiming the ads were deliberately
deceptive.
"It's frightening that the cable guys don't understand it -- or maybe it's
good news that they don't get it -- I think they do get it and are trying
to stretch reality," he said.
Hostile advertising?
The commercials portray a peaceful neighborhood where once-friendly
neighbors grow increasingly hostile as more and more users sign up for
cable Net access and high-speed services slow to a crawl. In the ad,
spray-painted signs accuse some neighbors of being "Web hogs" and
threatening others to "log off."
The cable vs. DSL controversy is every bit as mature.
"This is almost silly," Britton said. If the cable guys are in a tizzy over
this commercial then they don't have to look any further than their own
network, which is in fact a shared neighborhood resource."
Oh grow up, say cable proponents, who point out that networks are
easily split as subscriptions increase.
Britton acknowledged that DSL resources are also shared, that multiple
conversations or data transmissions are merged -- or, as he put it,
"multiplexed" -- onto the same lines at Pac Bell's central switching
office.
The print and radio ads made that point clear, Britton said, but such a
clarication seemed unncecessary after Pac Bell aired its TV campaign
before focus groups.
"Customers got it, so we didn't think it was an issue," he said. "Now
what we will do is add a tagline that clarifies (that DSL lines are
dedicated) from your home to our central serving office."
Nobody's trying to mislead customers, Britton insisted. "We say, let's let
customers have a choice. Customers are going to like both of these
technologies."
Call us, said Excite@Home's Bowman. "We are hoping to have a dialogue
with Pac Bell. We haven't ruled anything out at this point. We're waiting
[for Pac Bell's response to the company's cease-and-desist letter]. I
can't say with clarity what the next step is." |
