The era of free online play on consoles is over- Nintendo are apparently bringing a suite of full featured online services to the Switch, but with that comes the end of the era of free online play. Nintendo Switch will have paid online services.
To be clear, this won’t be true right away- you will be able to play online for free until Fall, at which point you have to switch to paying for online. Exact details, such as what services will be gated behind the fee, will be revealed at a later date.
The one thing that Nintendo did share was that the full suite of their online services will be entirely compatible with smartphones. They discussed looking up games online and jumping in directly with smartphones, but I am sure more information will be coming later.
The Nintendo Switch conference is occurring right now. We will keep you posted on all the news as it comes.