Verizon Communications (ticker: VZ) has thrown down the gauntlet in the fight for mobile consumers, launching an attack ad this week against rival Sprint Corp. (S).
This most recent spat started when Sprint hired away Verizon’s “Can you hear me now” pitchman, Paul Marcarelli, reports Fortune. Sprint recently featured him in a commercial, where he claims “Guess what, it’s 2016 and every network is great.”
Verizon took matters into its own keyboards and released an ad starring Jamie Foxx, directly and unapologetically targeting Sprint. “Sprint is last nationally in 4G LTE coverage,” he says in the commercial.
Sprint fought back and justified its ad claims in a statement. “Our network covers nearly 300 million people — that’s approximately 94 percent of the U.S. population,” the statement reads. “Yes, our footprint is smaller in some markets, but our network covers every major market in the U.S. from Los Angeles to New York, Seattle to Boston, and every big city in between.”
But this is the real meat of the statement that’s more indicative of what’s going on: “More and more customers are figuring out that they are being ripped off by Verizon.”
Meanwhile, its CEO Marcelo Claure didn’t hold back on Twitter, going off on a hurricane-level tweetstorm regarding the ad. Verizon still says Sprint was embellishing its coverage.
Fortune notes that Verizon’s soon-to-be newest executive Ronan Donne, who will head the wireless unit, could be more prolific on social networks than Verizon executives of the past. This suggests Claure could be in for quite the wake-up call.
Verizon’s stock is up about 16 percent on the year, though Sprint’s is up a noticeably whopping almost 71 percent.
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Verizon (VZ) and Sprint (S) Are Fighting and Want You to Know About It originally appeared on usnews.com
