Reliance Jio vs Airtel : Delhi HC asks Airtel to make changes in its IPL ad; 'Jio is a jealous competitor,' says Airtel

Airtel and Jio are not leaving any chances to confront each other, either its market or court. Recently Jio filed a case against Airtel, appealing that Airtel is misleading their customers through misleading advertisements. In the current IPL season, both the companies launched a series of offers and plan to stream free IPL matches. Now, Jio has claimed that Airtel is broadcasting a wrong advertisement campaign which claims to telecast the free live streaming of IPL matches for its customer.

Jio argued in its statement, Airtel is falsely propagating the advertisement that live streaming of IPL matches is free of cost while users are paying data charges. Jio stated in its complaint that “deliberately deceptive, misrepresenting and misleading in their content since the subscriber wanting to watch T20 matches on his electronic device, will doubtless incur charges for data being consumed to download/ live stream the T20 cricket matches as per the data download charges/plan availed of by the subscriber, thus it is not free by no means.”

In a recently released plan, Airtel and Hotstar made a collaboration to provide the live streaming of IPL matches. Airtel’s senior counsel stated in the court that “Jio is a jealous competitor and what is meant by ‘free subscription’ is a free subscription of HOTSTAR network and whereas the advertisement specifically provides if one intends to watch the game one has to use data as per the plan was taken by him/her”.

After the court order, Airtel has to tweak their advertisement including two points.

1. Subscription of Hotstar is only free,

2. Data charges will be as per subscriber’s tariff plan.

This is not the first legal foray of Airtel and Jio in the court. In 2017, Jio sued Airtel and Ookla ( global brand speed tester ) for claiming to be the fastest network in India.