Odido, one of the Netherlands’ three mobile network operators, sells its unlimited-data plans at four different speeds. Every one of them lets the customer use as much data as they like. What changes from one to the next is how fast.

On a 24-month contract, Unlimited Start has an advertised maximum speed of 20 Mbps and costs EUR 25 a month. Unlimited Basic raises the ceiling to 400 Mbps for EUR 32.50, and Unlimited Plus to 700 Mbps for EUR 37.50. Unlimited Fastest reaches 1,000 Mbps, also for EUR 37.50. The higher tiers carry more roaming data and international minutes too, but the dimension that most clearly separates them is speed.

It is a structure familiar from fixed broadband, where customers routinely choose between speed tiers. Once data volume is unlimited, speed is an obvious way to separate otherwise similar mobile propositions, and some operators use it in exactly that way.

“Unlimited” describes how much data a customer can use. It does not necessarily describe how fast. Of 465 unlimited standard consumer postpaid plans tracked by Tarifica in Q2 2026, 97 — about one in five — are sold with a permanent speed ceiling. And where speed is the only recorded difference between two such plans, operators can charge broadly similar premiums for radically different increases in speed.

Ladders, Operator By Operator

KPN, Odido’s larger rival, has built almost the same structure: unlimited plans at 50, 400, 700 and 1,000 Mbps, priced at EUR 30.50, 36.00, 38.00 and 42.50 on a 24-month term. In both Dutch ranges, around EUR 12 separates the slowest unlimited tier from the fastest.

Austria’s ladders are shorter and steeper. A1 sells unlimited plans at 150, 300 and 500 Mbps, Drei at 200, 300 and 500 Mbps, and in each case the top tier costs around EUR 30 more than the bottom one — for a far smaller increase in speed than the Dutch operators offer.

Far From Universal

This is not how unlimited data is sold everywhere. Of the 39 markets in which Tarifica tracks unlimited postpaid plans, 23 have no unlimited plan sold with a permanent speed ceiling. Where such plans do exist, they are most common in a handful of European markets: they account for 18 of 33 unlimited plans in the Netherlands, 10 of 14 in Austria, 9 of 15 in the Czech Republic and 14 of 35 in the United Kingdom.

What A Faster Tier Costs

On the Dutch and Austrian ladders, speed is the headline difference between tiers but not the only one; higher tiers also include more roaming data and international minutes. To isolate speed, we looked for pairs of unlimited plans from the same operator, on the same contract term, where the advertised maximum speed is the only difference in any attribute Tarifica records. Figure 2 shows eight such pairs.

What stands out is how differently the increase in speed relates to the increase in price. Vodafone Portugal charges EUR 5 more — 20 percent — to double the speed ceiling from 500 to 1,000 Mbps. EE in the UK charges GBP 5 more — 19 percent — to raise it a hundredfold, from 10 Mbps to 1,000. Three UK charges 14 percent more for a roughly sixfold increase, and Swisscom’s Premium Speed Option the same 14 percent for a twentyfold one. Vodafone UK and Telenor in Sweden both charge 26 percent for a tenfold increase.

The Czech Republic stands apart. O2 charges 40 percent more for its faster unlimited plan there, and Vodafone, whose unlimited range tops out at 50 Mbps, charges 78 percent more to move from 10 Mbps to that top tier — the largest premium in the comparison, for one of the smallest increases in speed.

Not The Same As Throttling

Unlimited Is Only Part Of The Specification

For anyone comparing mobile prices, the implication is straightforward. Two unlimited plans at similar prices are not necessarily the same product. In the Netherlands, Austria and the United Kingdom, the speed ceiling is part of what the customer is buying, and the gap between tiers within a single operator can be very large: the widest observed, at EE, runs from 10 Mbps to 1,000 Mbps. A comparison of unlimited plans that ignores the speed ceiling is, in those markets, comparing different things.

For operators, speed tiers are a way of differentiating unlimited propositions without limiting data. How they are priced varies widely: a similar premium buys a doubling of speed at one operator and a hundredfold increase at another. “Unlimited” answers the question of how much. On its own, it does not answer the question of how fast.

About the Analysis

The analysis uses standard consumer postpaid mobile plans maintained in Tarifica’s Telecom Pricing Intelligence Platform (TPIP) for Q2 2026. TPIP tracks plan-level pricing and plan attributes across 46 countries; the United States is tracked as four metropolitan markets. Prices are in local currency.

“Unlimited” refers to data volume. A plan is counted as having a permanent speed ceiling where TPIP records a headline advertised maximum download speed that applies throughout use of the plan and is lower than the speed available on another plan from the same operator. This attribute is researched consistently across TPIP coverage. Throttling refers only to a speed reduction after a finite data allowance has been used, and therefore does not apply to unlimited plans.

Figure 1 shows the four euro-denominated operators with unlimited plans at three or more speeds on a 24-month contract; where more than one plan is sold at the same advertised maximum speed, only the lowest-priced is shown. The comparisons in Figure 2 pair unlimited plans from the same operator and contract term whose recorded attributes — 5G access, roaming allowance and destinations, international minutes, bundled entertainment and other add-ons — are identical apart from advertised maximum speed; attributes not collected may still differ. Plans sold by retailers that carry several networks’ products are excluded from the operator comparisons, as are ranges where recorded speed values could not be compared consistently.