Review requested
A reader has views on how the phrase “free surf” is used and how honest it really is.
Question: I think you should review the term “Free surf” in the Swedish mobile market. Is it really free surfing, or is it just a marketing lie?
I myself use Chilimobil “Full speed”, but have discovered that in practice it is not unlimited. There is a daily limit which means that when you reach a certain limit, the speed is completely throttled. This means that you cannot, for example, finish watching a movie on Netflix without interruption. Calling this “free surfing” feels misleading to us consumers.
It would be interesting if you could make a report on how the operators use these daily blocks and if it can really be called “unlimited” when you are constantly blocked in the middle of use.
Elias Nordling answers: Hello! Yes, free surfing is a term like that which, like a lifetime guarantee, has in practice come to have its own meaning in a marketing context.
Every time a mobile operator has tried true unlimited surfing, it has resulted in a few users using up the entire capacity of the network, for example by downloading torrents around the clock. Therefore, all operators have a policy of limiting free surfing to reasonable usage, and reserve the right to reduce the speed or otherwise affect the subscription if it is judged to be overusing it.
In the case of Chilimobil, they have set a limit of 25 GB per day in their “fair usage policy”. If you use more than that, the data speed is throttled as you noticed. If you watch Netflix, it takes up to 1 GB per hour in SD resolution, 3 GB per hour in HD and 7 GB per hour in 4K, so if you stream in 4K resolution, you can reach Chilimobil’s ceiling in a couple of hours. For comparison, we can take Tele2, which in its unlimited subscriptions allows 50 GB per day, but if you run out, you can send an SMS and get 5 GB an unlimited number of times, which still prevents automatic file downloads.
Free surfing means free in the sense that you don’t have to think about how much data pot you used and buy new if it runs out, but not free as in you can run maximum downloads around the clock.
Should the operators be more clear about this instead of hiding it in Q&A? Yes, they should.
This is an excerpt from a longer article in which the Mobile editorial team answered mixed reader questions that came in. The entire article has previously been published exclusively for Plus members on Mobil.se. Here you can become a Plus member and thus get direct access to all articles on Mobil.se. As a plus member, you get collected tips and many other in-depth, guiding articles. You can find the entire original article here.