AT&T Claims That Customers Love Its Fake 5G E Branding And Faster Cellular Speeds

In the end, this all comes down to AT&T's customers and how they're either positively or negatively impacted by the company's fake 5G branding. But if you take AT&T's word for it, everything is just peachy with its customer base. 

"Customers love it," said AT&T Business CEO Thaddeus Arroyo in an interview with ZDNet. "Customers want faster speeds."

The company claims that it wanted to make a clear distinction between its two platforms -- 5G and 5G E -- and that this was the best way to get the point across to customers.

"What’s important for us is when a customer is in a 5GE environment, which ultimately provides them access to faster speeds when they have the right device," Arroyo added. "When they have the right network, we want them to know they're in an environment that's going to perform better. That's really the nature of it, but they're two distinct, separate platforms."

However, if AT&T wanted the two networks to be "distinct" as Arroyo claims, why the need to obfuscate things by using misappropriating "5G" in its 5G E branding? That just seeds confusion, which AT&T's competitors say is exactly the purpose of this branding initiative. In fact, what AT&T labels as 5G E, its competitors instead call LTE Advanced or LTE-A.

Although T-Mobile has not gone through legal channels like Sprint to counter AT&T's 5G E narrative, it has openly mocked the company's branding choice. Verizon, on the other hand, stated, "We will not call our 4G network a 5G network if customers don’t experience a performance or capability upgrade that only 5G can deliver."

Tell us what you think; is AT&T right in its decision to market LTE-A as 5G E or is everyone making a mountain out of a molehill? Sound off below in the comments section.