Netflix boss: Phone networks will give everyone unlimited data to watch films and TV

The move would suit Netflix, whose mission is to get onto everyone's phones

Founder and CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings speaks during a keynote speech at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on February 27, 2017 (LLUIS GENE/AFP/Getty Images)

Phone companies will soon start giving people free, unlimited internet to watch films and TV, according to Netflix's boss.

CEO Reed Hastings suggested that networks will soon allow their customers access to two different streams for watching videos. They will be able to to watch as much Netflix as they want but have a relatively slow speed, he suggested, while they will also keep their unlimited allowance for other uses for the internet.

That will be necessary because there will no longer be any other way of watching TV, he said.

"Ten to twenty years from now all the video you view is going to be on the Internet," he said at Mobile World Congress, the annual event where mobile phone companies show off their newest product. "I think screens today are really stunning, you can see all the depth right in front of you. The beautiful thing is you can watch it on the move."

The data caps that networks impose mean that people are limited in watching such videos – meaning that the companies are likely to open them up to watch more videos, he suggested.

"What we are going to see I think is a number of companies pioneering new ways of offering services to the consumers where it is unlimited video data but it is limited to say one megabit speed," he said.

"So it is a slower speed but you get unlimited data on that and that turns out to be very efficient on network so an operator can offer unlimited viewing."

The move would suit Netflix, whose mission is to get onto everyone's phones as well as every other device. It has been resistant to some technologies that get around problems with phone networks, like offline viewing – a technology that it first said it wouldn't introduce before it then did so, reluctantly.

But it could provoke complaints from campaigners for net neutrality. A number of companies have attempted to offer quicker streams to certain websites and similar features, but they have been met with opposition from people who believe that all internet traffic should be treated equally.