oldbadger
Skanky Old Mongrel!
My wife and I both get 10gig data, unlimited texts and 100 minutes phone time for £10 per month. We never use up our allocated amount, even though we both use IT all the time!When I was a kid, the phone company charged a pretty standard fee for local services. The extras were long distance. You could call and yap all day to people in the area, but out of area was a bit pricey.
With cell phones, you could get unlimited talk for a lump fee. You had to pay a bit extra for text(this was before the smartphone was commonplace). After awhile, they lumped talk/text together(and I think a small amount of data). This is the deal I still have. I can talk all day, but no one wants to.
The most expensive telephone I ever used was (40 years ago) when I had a motor yacht and used marine radio. If I needed to make a phone call I would call up Thames radio services, give the telephone number, they would connect me and then I could speak to the called person. I had to press my transmit button to speak (simplex system) and then release it to hear the caller speaking, so it was best to to use radio protocol, and it cost £1 per minute which was rather costly back then.
If only mobiles had been around! I expect that mobile phones would be able to connect anywhere in the southern north sea these days.