AT&T Drops Ad Watchdog Suit
BBB National Program’s National Advertising Division agreed to reverse a decision against AT&T.
WASHINGTON, Dec. 22, 2025 – AT&T dropped its lawsuit against an advertising industry watchdog Friday, after the organization agreed to retract a cease-and-desist letter.
The carrier had sued BBB National Program’s National Advertising Division, a self-regulatory body that adjudicates complaints companies file against each other, and argued the group’s rules were largely not binding.
The lawsuit was in response to an NAD decision that found an AT&T ad violated the group’s rules by tallying up past findings that T-Mobile ads were misleading. Companies aren’t supposed to use NAD findings against other companies in promotional material.
NAD issued a rare statement rebuking AT&T over the ad, saying it “undermines NAD’s mission to promote truth and accuracy of advertising claims,” and sent a cease-and-desist letter to AT&T demanding the company take the ads down. NAD decisions don’t have legal force, but they can lead to networks and platforms pulling ads and the group refers some cases to law enforcement agencies.
In a Dec. 18 letter shared by an AT&T spokesperson, BBB National Program attorneys said the group retracted its cease-and-desist letter and no longer opposed networks airing the ad.
Joint statement from AT&T and BBB
The two issued the following joint statement:
“AT&T Mobility LLC and BBB National Programs jointly announced today that they have amicably resolved their dispute. As a result, the lawsuit filed by AT&T Mobility against BBB National Programs has been voluntarily dismissed.”
AT&T had been arguing that it had never signed anything requiring it to adhere to NAD rules, and said the rules should only be binding in certain instances or potentially not at all.
The lawsuit had caused T-Mobile not to participate in a recent NAD investigation, which was prompted by an AT&T complaint. T-Mobile cited “confidentiality concerns” with sharing information in a proceeding initiated by AT&T, given the company's position that NAD rules didn’t apply to it.
NAD referred T-Mobile to the Federal Trade Commission over its refusal to cooperate, a relatively rare step for the organization.
A T-Mobile spokesperson said in a statement that the NAD reversing its decision that AT&T had broken the rules was “sad for our industry.”
“It seems obvious that AT&T made it clear to the NAD that they would bring their considerable legal and financial resources to bear against a small, non-profit industry organization and bury them in endless, expensive litigation,” the spokesperson said. “It’s bad news for industry self-regulation and the integrity of the entire process.”
The major ISPs routinely complain about each other to the NAD. Twice in September, the group recommended AT&T modify or discontinue some of its own advertising claims based on complaints from Verizon and Charter. T-Mobile and Verizon each had similarly negative decisions issued against them this year.
AT&T and T-Mobile are also currently embroiled in another lawsuit in which AT&T accused T-Mobile of trying to illegally scrape customer account data from its systems with its online carrier switching tool.
T-Mobile no longer asks prospective customers to log into their AT&T or Verizon account directly, but a Texas judge still granted AT&T’s request for a restraining order last week.
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