/ The rivals are battling over ad copy before launching competing satellite calling services.
By Jess Weatherbed, a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.
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AT&T has updated its satellite calling advertisement after T-Mobile challenged its rival’s use of the verb “is.” When the “Epic Bad Golf Day” video starring Ben Stiller was initially released in April, the ad closed with “the future of help is an AT&T satellite call away.” This has now been changed to “will be a satellite call away.”
T-Mobile took its complaint to the Better Business Bureau’s national advertising division, which said the wording in AT&T’s original statement implied that the carrier’s Supplemental Coverage from Space service was already available to customers. While AT&T cut a deal in May with AST SpaceMobile to launch the service, it’s currently unavailable, and it could be several months before the offering is rolled out. T-Mobile is launching its own Starlink-based satellite calling service sometime this fall.
Image: AT&T
Image: AT&T
A revised version of the ad is now available to watch alongside the original on AT&T’s YouTube channel.