Begun, The “Colorful Balls” Telecom Wars Have

Whatever ad agency sold the idea of colorful balls rolling down a ramp to explain the concept of cell phone coverage has unwittingly struck gold. When Verizon’s initial ad began running ad nauseam, we thought it was curious and silly, if unconvincing. It’s so hard to quantify what a “better” cellular telecom experience would look like in this day and age, with enormous contracts and metered everything, that harping on what some third party said about X figure or Y number seems totally absurd. And yet.

Not only does Sprint do their very best Verizon impression in “A Faster Network At Half the Price Explained by Colorful Balls”, T-Mobile has their own colorful balls ad that, in the fashion of such things, makes an aggressively small amount of sense to the viewer. (Yes, Verizon has added fewer people to its network lately, because it has fewer people to add — it’s a much larger network).

Unfortunately, this idea seems to be something the “big four” have really dug their teeth into. T-Mo has pegged itself as “The Uncarrier” and takes every chance to needle its larger competitors, so perhaps the “Ballbuster Challenge” and this tweet were predictable jabs. It still makes no sense!