Heroes and Sprint: Product Placement Gone Wrong
I was catching up on my viewing of Heroes this evening when I noticed a rather obvious product placement for Sprint. The product placement doesn’t bother me so much, it’s the fact that anyone who knows anything about mobile phone networks would realize that this product placement is unrealistic.
Sprint uses CDMA technology to provide service. Just about everywhere else in the world uses GSM, including in Cork, Ireland, where the pictured scene was taking place. Granted, Sprint does sell GSM phones, including some Nokia ones, surprisingly enough. The fact is, most Sprint phones you can easily buy won’t work in Ireland, or anywhere else outside of North America for that matter.
This product placement fails spectacularly due to the lack of realism, though I suppose Sprint can technically do what is being shown here. If the company doing the placement was AT&T or T-Mobile, it would have been a lot more believable. AT&T specifically advertises their International roaming capabilities. T-Mobile, while they don’t specifically make a point of advertising it, will roam internationally quite well thanks to it’s GSM-based technology.
Am I being too much of a geek by bringing this up? What do you think?
