Cellco Partnership v. T-Mobile USA Inc., 2026 WL 867129, No. 26-cv-0972 (LAK) (S.D.N.Y. Mar. 30, 2026)
Verizon sued T-Mobile for false advertising and the court granted a preliminary injunction, finding that T-Mobile’s claims that switchers could “Save Over $1,000” were likely false. As the court explains:
The cellular service industry is dominated by three large providers that fiercely compete to wrest customers from each other and to attract new ones. Price (or perceived price) is among the most important subjects of competition. Much provider advertising seeks to induce competitors’ customers to “switch” to the advertising provider. It often does so by claiming that the advertiser’s service is the cheapest.
The court agreed that the new campaign compared apples to oranges.
Verizon’s pricing strategy allows customers to customize their plans by adding optional “perks,” bundled together and offered at a discount compared to what the selected services (e.g., HBO and Netflix) would cost individually.
T-Mobile, by contrast, includes some benefits, such as a smaller, select set of streaming services, for no or little additional cost. It also includes T-Satellite, a network of low-orbit satellites that provide cellular service in parts of the United States that otherwise are unserved by terrestrial cellular networks. (T-Satellite is available to customers of other service providers, but few Verizon customers buy it.)
Previously, Verizon challenged T-Mobile’s “Save Up to 20%” campaign before the NAD, which recommended that “T-Mobile discontinue the challenged claims” because (a) “consumers are not likely to expect the value of ancillary benefits to be included in a savings comparison,” and (b) the terms that would enable a customer to save 20 percent were “not clear and conspicuous and further contradict[ ] the message of the broad comparative savings claim.” The NARB on review upheld that recommendation in part because “many reasonable consumers will conclude that the promoted savings is based on the cost of the wireless plans without any adjustments for additional benefits.” On January 22, 2026, the NARB found that T-Mobile still had “not made a bona fide attempt to” comply with aspects of its decision.
Instead, the “Save Over $1,000” campaign features claims that customers can save over $1,000 per year by switching from Verizon’s Unlimited Ultimate Plan or AT&T’s Unlimited Premium Plan to T-Mobile. This campaign tells customers that they can “[s]ave on streaming, satellite, and more benefits the other big guys leave out.” The fine print reads:
Savings vs. comparable plans at AT&T and Verizon plus the costs of optional benefits; plan features and taxes and fees vary .... With 3+ lines of Better Value Plan, 3+ new lines & 2 eligible ports or 3+ lines & 5+ years on T-Mobile postpaid plan required. Qualifying credit [required].
T-Mobile’s online calculator shows the a bunch of purported monthly cost comparisons between T-Mobile’s Better Value Plan and Verizon’s Unlimited Ultimate Plan, where services are listed as “included” through T-Mobile but extra through Verizon. Adding up the cost comparisons, T-Mobile’s calculator purports to show that its Better Value Plan costs customers $143 per month, whereas Verizon’s supposedly comparable Unlimited Ultimate Plan costs customers $260 per month, or a difference of $1,404 per year.
Verizon also has claimed in ads that its service is cheaper than those of its competitors. Until at least the T-Mobile campaign’s launch, Verizon offered its own interactive calculator that customers to toggle adding to their plan certain features, such as streaming bundles, that Verizon offers and then purported to show what a T-Mobile or AT&T customer purportedly would have to pay to obtain those same benefits.
Verizon’s core objections were two: “First, the campaign compares the promotional rate T-Mobile charges to new customers to Verizon’s nonpromotional rate, ignoring Verizon’s promotional rate of $175 per month. Second, it attributes to Verizon the costs of ancillary benefits that T-Mobile includes in its plan without charging T-Mobile the costs of ancillary benefits Verizon includes in its plan.”
T-Mobile counterclaimed that Verizon was falsely advertising its own “Better Deal,” but didn’t move for a preliminary injunction.
For likely success on the merits, only falsity and materiality were contested. First, the court found that the “Save Over $1,000” campaign “necessarily implies” that customers can save over $1,000 per year on a comparable plan by switching from Verizon’s Unlimited Ultimate Plan to T-Mobile’s Better Value Plan. “That message is false. Instead of putting comparable plans side-by-side, T-Mobile engages in an apples-to-oranges comparison at every step of the way.” First, the undisclosed comparison of Verizon’s nonpromotional rate ($195 per month) with T-Mobile’s own promotional rate ($140 per month). It attempts to define away that problem by arguing that “$140 for three lines is the standard rate for T-Mobile’s Better Value [P]lan” was “akin to comparing an apple to an orange.”
T-Mobile argued that the comparison was reasonable because it “targets existing Verizon customers,” who supposedly would not be “eligible for Verizon’s promotional price.” “But nowhere in the campaign does T-Mobile indicate that it is speaking to only the subset of Verizon customers who are paying Verizon’s nonpromotional rate.” Verizon’s promotional rate lasts for three years, and using the term “switch” didn’t convey any limit on the claim.
Then, T-Mobile compared the price for each of three streaming services that it includes at little to no additional cost in its Better Value Plan to the full cost of each of Verizon’s bundles that include the relevant streaming service. “Yet, T-Mobile neither credits Verizon for the value of the additional services included in Verizon’s bundles nor charges T-Mobile for those services, which are not available through the Better Value Plan.” It also charged Verizon for the “sticker price” of T-Satellite too, even though T-Mobile controls how much to charge Verizon customers for T-Satellite and even though most Verizon customers do not purchase T-Satellite.
It was not enough that T-Mobile disclosed its inputs and methodology, because the plans were different, but T-Mobile portrayed them as “equivalents in all ways other than in price.” This is literally false by necessary implication because it portrays “non-comparable products ... as otherwise equivalent (except for the superior or inferior aspect being illustrated in the advertisement).” “Accounting for Verizon’s promotional rate and the ancillary streaming benefits it offers in its bundles that T-Mobile does not and removing from Verizon’s side of the figurative ledger the cost of T-Satellite, the supposed savings fall to a mere $228.84 per year.”
Finally, the campaign’s price guarantee of five years applied to only “the cost of voice, data, and texting on T-Mobile’s cellular network,” or “the price of the rate plan,” not the ancillary streaming benefits or T-Satellite. This was a “crucial fact” but disclosed “at best indirectly, in fine print, and only on some advertisements.” That didn’t change “the unmistakable message of the campaign that a customer can save over $1,000 per year by switching to T-Mobile.” That was literally false.
Materiality: “Claiming a price difference between two purportedly comparable products is material. Indeed, T-Mobile’s claim of immateriality is nonsense for the obvious reason that it is inconsistent with its decision to launch the campaign and with its repeated arguments that enjoining the campaign would harm its ability to communicate the value of its services and compete in the cellular service market.”
Verizon was thus entitled to a presumption of irreparable harm that was not rebutted by delay. The ongoing dispute over a different ad campaign didn’t affect the fact that Verizon “promptly” filed suit after the “Save Over $1,000” campaign launched.
Nor did Verizon’s allegedly bad conduct in substantially similar advertising affect the balance of equities. Even assuming that Verizon’s “Better Deal” campaign was false, Verizon took down its competitive grid before suing. Its position “must be judged by the facts existing as they were when this suit was begun, not by the facts existing in an earlier time .... Conduct which came to an end prior to the events which are in issue cannot constitute an unclean hands defense.” Even if that were not the case, it still would be “better to remedy one wrong than to leave two wrongs at large,” “particularly where the harm damages not just the parties but also the public.” The counterclaim was the right place to address Verizon’s bad behavior.
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