Elisa, the largest operator in Finland, has had me as a customer since I first landed in this country nearly half a decade ago. Now this might shock some of you, but I’m actually a prepaid user. Back in 2007, Elisa’s prepaid brand was called “Columbus”, but a few years ago it was rebranded as “Saunalahti”. Because I’m a foreigner, if I want to setup a postpaid account I need to provide a 300€ deposit, which is something I’m not too keen on doing for obvious reasons. But enough about that, today’s news is that Elisa has revamped their prepaid data plans. They’re all unlimited, as they’ve always been, you simply pay more for faster speeds. Starting with the fastest tier, which doesn’t have a speed cap, you can get a month’s worth of access for 24.80€ or a week’s worth for 6.80€. If you’re cool with being throttled at 1 megabit per second, then you can get unlimited data for a month for just 14.80€. Go to the slowest tier, capped at 384 kilobits per second, and you can get a month of data for 6.80€ or the newest option of six months worth of data for 29.80€.
Which tier do I use? The slowest one. Why? Because email, Twitter, and light web surfing is all I do when I’m out and about. During most of my day I’m almost always connected to WiFi, so having half a year worth of unlimited data for roughly $37.25 is frankly amazing.
While I’m on the topic of prepaid, I have to ask: Why doesn’t the American prepaid market work like the European prepaid market? In Europe your SIM card is like a wallet full of cash. You only open it up when you want to pay for something, in this case minutes, texts, or data. In America your concept of “prepaid” is to fork over a monthly fee, regardless of whether you used your device or not. In fact, it shouldn’t even be called “prepaid”. It’s more like postpaid, minus the contract.
Update: And for those who are wondering, if you don’t subscribe to any of Elisa’s prepaid data plans then you’re charged 2€ per day for unlimited data. Basically as soon as you connect to the network to suf the internet, and it sees you aren’t on a data plan, then you have 24 hours to suck up as much content as you want for the price of a one way ride on the subway/bus/tram. Isn’t Europe awesome?