Cell C plans to fight to use the term “4Gs” in its marketing campaign, saying the complaint by its competitors amounts to “corporate bullying”.

The mobile operator will appeal against the ruling by the Advertising Standards Authority of SA (ASA) ordering it to stop using the term “4Gs” to advertise its new mobile broadband network.

The ruling was based on a complaint lodged by Cell C rivals MTN and Vodacom. The larger operators argue the term 4Gs could lead to confusion among consumers, a sentiment the ASA agreed with.

ASA communications manager Corné Koch says Cell C’s argument that the term is short “for great service” or “for great speed” is not good enough.

However, Cell C CEO Lars Reichelt says the complaint lodged by its competitors is just a way to try to distract from Cell C’s recent successes in the market.

“We will appeal the ruling because we believe that this amounts to corporate bullying,” he says.

He says Cell C is disappointed by the ruling, especially as the ASA “did not appear to take into account Cell C’s full and extensive responses to the Vodacom and MTN complaints”.

Reichelt says the company is not claiming to have a fourth-generation mobile network, Rather, its use of the term is a declaration of the company’s value proposition.

“We can also clearly demonstrate that Cell C provides superior performance in terms of download and upload performance,” he says.

Cell C has been rolling out its 21Mbit/s network in stages across the country, with Durban and Pietermaritzburg the latest to gain access to the service. — Candice Jones, TechCentral