Tata Sky seeks action against rival Airtel

New Delhi, Jan 11: Tata Sky has accused its DTH rival Airtel Digital of misleading the public with its Aug 2009 ad campaign 'Dil Titli'.

The ad staring Bollywood stars Saif Ali Khan and Kareena Kapoor, claims that Airtel's service provides superior picture quality because of MPEG4 and DVBS2 technologies.

Tata Sky, which has approached the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) seeking action against the Bharti Airtel's DTH arm, argues that MPEG4 is just a compression technology and makes no difference to the picture quality.

"We are trying to convince the media and the public at large that the claim that MPEG4 technology provides superior picture quality is false. It is just a compression technology and makes no difference to the picture quality," Tata Sky Chief Marketing Officer Vikram Mehra said.

In a reply to Tata Sky's complaint, ASCI said, "As per their (Consumer Complaints Council - CCC) decision, the complaint has been upheld as the advertisement contravened Chapter 1.4 of the ASCI code. The CCC concluded that the advertisement is misleading, as the viewer of the TV commercial is led to believe that Airtel Digital TV has superior picture quality because of MPEG4 or DVBS2."

When approached, Airtel said, "We did receive some correspondence from ASCI and we have responded to that. Our stand is that MPEG4 and DVBS2 are some of the many features that we offer, that helps us offer superior picture quality in comparison to ordinary technology."

OneIndia News