The problem with this is that it allows for loopholes in advertising, whereby any company can bend the truth to their liking and make competitive advancements over competitors while lacking the actual resources to back the claim. This will pose an interesting problem, as many states have adjudicated their own tenets of contract law, such that a prospective customer could likely sue the company for the false advertising. Moreover, what happened to responsibility in marketing?
I pose this question as a Sprint customer, one who, although loyal for preferential treatment in a quid-pro-quo situation of maintaining the same account for years, enjoys the occasional "4G" speeds in New Orleans (Baton Rouge is not set up for it, although the rumor is that will happen before March 2011) and has from time to time seen the difference between my phone's internet speed and other brands. However, if I don't truly have 4G in my hands, 1) when will I get it? 2) why lie?
While it's usually ok to fib a little in advertising, the problem here hinges on the speed with which technology advances. As a member of the generation Y, I can remember growing up when a cellphone itself was incredible, not to mention having to suffer through the agonizingly slow speed of the first internet-capable cell phone. Why are we not at 4G yet? Has the industry (i.e. cell phone technology) decided to benchmark itself at a higher rate than technology is actually evolving? Or perhaps our growth in the technology sector is just slowing at a rate we didn't anticipate? Placing this chicken or egg question aside for one minute, later in the article it mentions we will be getting this technology soon enough (from the end of this year on one type of technology to roughly about a year from december on the other); I still save a cynicism towards and slight fear of the slippery slope of falsities in advertising - in the end, what if this spreads to something also heavily advertised but more critical to our health or safety? What if the next time, a manufacturer gently fibs about a heart medication, or the crash rating on an automobile?
