While attack ads are nothing new in the technology industry, it's still a bit uncommon to see a larger, more established company go after a smaller one — but that's what AT&T is doing in new full-page newspaper ads. As reported by Bloomberg, AT&T ran attack ads yesterday (which you can see below courtesy TMoNews) against T-Mobile in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. The ads claim that T-Mobile's network has twice as many dropped calls and failed calls while also having 50 percent slower download speeds. This comes a few months after T-Mobile CEO John Legere brazenly called AT&T's network "crap" at a CES press event. And while Legere said that T-Mobile's markedly different strategy wouldn't include ads with such a harsh tone, it looks like AT&T has decided not to take the smaller carrier's aggressiveness lying down.

While the candid nature of Legere's comments was rather unexpected, it's equally surprising to see AT&T go after a carrier with a significantly smaller customer base. In statement, T-Mobile CMO Mike Sievert said, "Wow. Looks like we struck a chord. AT&T doth protest too much. Glad they're spending their money to print our name." Meanwhile, AT&T was ready with a statement of its own. "T-Mobile's advertising is a combination of misguided and just plain wrong," said spokesperson Mark Siegel. He said the ad was "just a friendly reminder of the fact that independent third-party testing says AT&T's network delivers faster speeds and fewer dropped calls than them." We're tracking down a copy of the ad for ourselves to see the fine print, as we'd like to know exactly where AT&T is getting its data from, but it's evident that the love AT&T once held for T-Mobile is truly dead and buried.