YOU ARE AT:CarriersVerizon hires Ricky Gervais to insult Sprint

Verizon hires Ricky Gervais to insult Sprint

Remember Ricky Gervais? You know, that guy from The Office? No, not The Office with Jim and Pam, the one that aired 15 years ago on BBC. Well, Verizon Wireless remembers him. So much so that the carrier enlisted Gervais to throw a few barbs at Sprint for some reason.

Here’s the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkjylYRI29E

Here’s the entirety of Gervais’s message: “Verizon is the No. 1 network in America. I know what you’re thinking – they all claim stuff like that. Yeah, but some of them stretch the truth. One said they were the fastest. We checked. It was fastest in Kansas City and a few other places. Verizon is consistently fast across the country. You wouldn’t want to hear from the bloke who patched a parachute, ‘it’s good over Kansas.’ Do you know what I mean? So that’s, anywhere else, splat.”

After delivering his lines, Gervais walks off camera and a voice over kicks in: “Only Verizon is the No. 1 network for consistently fast speeds.”

Network testing outfit RootMetrics in February released its latest nationwide report on wireless carrier network performance, drawing various reactions from the country’s largest operators depending on how they fared. The results, which included just the nation’s four largest operators and were conducted over the second half of 2015, showed Verizon Wireless with the top overall performance across five tested metrics: network reliability, network speed, data performance, call performance and text performance. In terms of “overall performance,” Verizon Wireless garnered a 94.5 score from RootMetrics, followed by a 91.3 score for AT&T Mobility, 86 score for Sprint and 80.9 score for T-Mobile US.

Here’s another video from the same campaign that more directly attacks Sprint:

https://youtu.be/TCFnaU88FZM

ABOUT AUTHOR

Sean Kinney, Editor in Chief
Sean Kinney, Editor in Chief
Sean focuses on multiple subject areas including 5G, Open RAN, hybrid cloud, edge computing, and Industry 4.0. He also hosts Arden Media's podcast Will 5G Change the World? Prior to his work at RCR, Sean studied journalism and literature at the University of Mississippi then spent six years based in Key West, Florida, working as a reporter for the Miami Herald Media Company. He currently lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.