Verizon sues Time Warner Cable over Commercial. (FiOS)

[Soontir C'boath]

Verizon sues Time Warner Cable over advertising
Wed Apr 9, 2008 6:08pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Telephone service provider Verizon Communications Inc brought its battle for video customers to court on Wednesday, with a lawsuit accusing rival Time Warner Cable Inc of false advertising.

Verizon said Time Warner Cable's TV ads falsely imply that Verizon's FiOS video service requires a satellite dish, that it does not include phone, broadband and video, and that Time Warner's network is better, in a lawsuit filed on Wednesday at the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

"We feel the lawsuit is without merit and we look forward to defending against it in the appropriate venue," Time Warner Cable spokesman Alex Dudley said.

Phone companies AT&T Inc and Verizon have been developing video services to help them compete better with cable companies Comcast Corp and Time Warner Cable, which also sell phone and Web services as well as television.

Verizon cited a commercial that started airing on March 3 in the lawsuit and said it was the fourth commercial and "most egregiously false" version of an ad that Time Warner Cable, more than 80 percent-owned by Time Warner Inc, started airing around the end of June 2007.

It said it was entitled to an injunction barring Time Warner Cable from running the ads and for a requirement that the cable company issue ads retracting the claims made in the previous ads. It said it was also looking for damages, including lost profits and a recovery of attorney's fees.

Time Warner Cable's ads are causing it "immediate and irreparable harm" by attacking the quality and reliability of its network, according to the suit.

"Once customers choose Time Warner over Verizon FiOS, switching costs, inertia, and the perceived inconvenience of switching providers keep many customers from changing," according to the lawsuit.

In January, Verizon said it had signed up 1 million FiOS subscribers, two-and-a-half years after it first started offering the service. Time Warner Cable said it ended 2007 with 13.3 million basic video subscribers.

(Reporting by Sinead Carew; Editing by Braden Reddall)

I was wondering when they would do this. Just looking at the stats that FiOS has should make everyone splurge. Now if only it was actually available in my area...

[Death from the Sea]

I think it is funny that Comcast(TimeWarner) is running commercials bashing AT&T for only allowing you to watch one HD channel at a time. Meaning that if you are watching an HD channel in the living room that the bedroom tv cannot view an HD channel at the same time. I say it is funny because Comcast only gives you ONE cable box to even get a HD signal with your cable package, unless you pay extra for more cable boxes and AT&T will give you up to THREE cable boxes with standard cable packages. So their one cable box does the same thing as AT&T, unless you pay extra.

[InnocentBystander]

What about their DVR setups, they can't get two shows at once?

[Death from the Sea]

What about their DVR setups, they can't get two shows at once?

I know that Time Warner and Comcast dvr boxes cannot record two shows at the same time. AT&T can do at least two, I think three or four maybe (if you include the HD channel).

My only complaints about AT&T is that they need to work out a few more bugs in the system. Like the information display for the show on the channel you are watching will sometimes be wrong and have the wrong show listed. Also occasionally the sound messes up and drops and sound like the people are talking in slow motion, which is fixed by turning the cable box off and then back on usually.

[Darth Mall]

What about their DVR setups, they can't get two shows at once?

I know that Time Warner and Comcast dvr boxes cannot record two shows at the same time. AT&T can do at least two, I think three or four maybe (if you include the HD channel).

That's false. My parents comcast DVR box can record 2 different HD channels. Rarely it will end early, but that is usually due to the schedule on the tv being off on the stations end (ie having the show go on 5 minutes longer than usual) vs what comcast has for show times