Most “we tested it” pages on affiliate sites are decorative. They imply a lab, a bench, a team in matching t-shirts, and then recommend forty products nobody could plausibly have used.
Here’s ours, written plainly, including the parts that aren’t flattering.
What we actually do
FrequentFlyerTech is research-led. That means most of what you read here comes from digging through primary sources: carrier coverage maps, insurer policy documents, fee schedules, regulator filings. We translate them into something you can act on in the ten minutes before you book.
On top of that, we run hands-on tests in the areas where it matters most and where a real test actually changes the answer. Those are marked clearly wherever they appear.
What we don’t do is dress up research as a road test. If we read a coverage figure off a carrier’s own map, we say so. If we ran the SIM ourselves in a specific city on a specific date, we say that instead, and we tell you the date, because a speed test from 2024 tells you nothing about 2026.
The four labels
Every factual claim on this site falls into one of four buckets. We use these internally to decide what we’re allowed to write, and we’d rather show you the machinery than pretend it doesn’t exist.
Tested
We ran it ourselves. There’s a record: date, city, device, network, method, and the raw result. When you see a specific number attached to a specific place and time, it came from here.
Example: “I ran this plan on an iPhone 15 in Shinjuku on 3 March 2026 and pulled 47 Mbps down.”
A test in one city doesn’t license a claim about another. Tokyo is not Osaka, and we won’t pretend otherwise.
Sourced
Someone credible published it, and we checked. You’ll see it attributed, with a date, and usually a link straight to the source so you can verify it yourself.
Example: “Airalo lists Japan coverage on Docomo and SoftBank.”
We prefer primary sources in this order: regulators and government advisories first, then the company’s own published terms, then established independent testing outfits. We don’t cite other affiliate sites. They have the same incentives we do, and circular sourcing is how bad numbers become received wisdom.
From experience
Things we’ve lived through as travelers. Airports, failure modes, the specific flavour of panic that comes with a dead phone in an unfamiliar city.
These are honest and they’re first-person, but they describe situations, not product performance. “I’ve landed at Narita at 11pm with no working SIM” is experience. “Product X saved me at Narita” would be a performance claim, and that needs a test.
Not established
No test, no credible source, no direct experience. This is the interesting one, because it’s where most affiliate content quietly invents something plausible.
We don’t publish it. If a claim matters and we can’t stand it up, you’ll either see us say so out loud (“we haven’t independently verified this”) or you won’t see the claim at all.
Why we’re telling you this
Two reasons, one high-minded and one entirely practical.
The practical one: it’s a legal requirement, and we’d rather meet it visibly. Claiming to have tested something you haven’t is banned outright under UK consumer protection rules and the equivalent EU directive, and the FTC’s endorsement guides say the same. Plenty of sites are casual about this. We’d rather not be.
The high-minded one: labels only mean anything if the boring ones are used honestly. If everything on a site is presented as first-hand testing, “we tested this” carries no information. By marking what’s sourced, we make the tested claims worth something.
How we make money
Affiliate commissions. If you buy through our links, we get paid, at no extra cost to you.
What that does not buy: a ranking. We’re not paid to place anyone first, and we don’t accept payment for placement or for a review outcome. Where we have a commercial relationship with a product we recommend, it’s disclosed on the page.
The honest caveat, since we’re being honest: we’re more likely to have covered a product that runs an affiliate programme, simply because that’s the commercial reality of a site like this. It doesn’t change the order we rank things in, but you should know the shape of the incentive. Read our full affiliate disclosure for the details.
When we get it wrong
Prices change, plans get restructured, coverage moves. We re-check anything price- or policy-related on a rolling basis, and every page carries the date its facts were last verified. If something’s gone stale, it’s flagged rather than quietly left to rot.
If you find something wrong, especially a number, tell us. Corrections get made and noted, not silently patched.