Sprint Sues AT&T Over Use of Marketing Term 5GE

AT&T vowed to fight a Sprint lawsuit against the company’s claims it’s now offering 5G evolution, or 5GE, in some markets. Sprint asked the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York for an immediate preliminary injunction against AT&T, preventing the carrier from making the claims. “AT&T has employed numerous deceptive tactics to mislead consumers into believing that it currently offers a coveted and highly anticipated fifth generation wireless network, known as 5G,” Sprint complained, filed Thursday (in Pacer). It called AT&T's 5GE “nothing more than an enhanced fourth generation Long Term Evolution wireless service, known as 4G LTE Advanced, which is offered by all other major wireless carriers.” While Sprint and other competitors are spending billions of dollars on their networks, AT&T “has sought to gain an unfair advantage in the race to 5G by embarking on a nationwide advertising campaign to deceive consumers into believing that its existing 4G LTE Advanced network is now a 5G network,” Sprint said. The case is #1:19-cv-01215-VSB. “We understand why our competitors don’t like what we are doing, but our customers love it,” an AT&T spokesperson emailed. “We introduced 5G Evolution more than two years ago, clearly defining it as an evolutionary step to standards-based 5G. 5G Evolution and the 5GE indicator simply let customers know when their device is in an area where speeds up to twice as fast as standard LTE are available.” AT&T Communications CEO John Donovan defended use of the term at CES in January (see 1901100018).