A long distance STD Call to one state to the other was around Rs 50 per minute. Likewise 500 Hours of TCP/IP internet connection (56Kbps max speed dial up based) was around Rs 10,000/- This was the situation in 1997/8, when I was doing 11th class, in Namakkal, a town in TamilNadu, where there wasnt a internet dialup server, so I have to do a STD call to connect to the internet.
Today, due to high volume and usage, voice & data bandwidth are becoming dead cheap! When compared to the US, UK or Australia, we enjoy the "cheapest" rates, which is also due to the "high population".
In the West, lot of companies landline (wired phone), gives option like Pay flat for the call, ie., 10 cents/pennies per call, regardless of the duration of the call.. And in some cases, you can see, free outgoing from landline to landline. This was there for nearly a decade.
Oflate here in India, when the new GSM Cellular providers came into the market, especially
TATA DOCOMO brought Pay per second PLAN, which is now catching up very hotly. And parallely, we have got Pay per call, which is around Rs 3 per ten minutes, or Re 1 per three minutes (for Local/STD / while in Roaming) which is also catching up!.
Likewise the broadband connection is hitting the cheapest rate, like 20GB download a month is around Rs 750 etc Possibility of the rates to go down, as usage per Sq.Km is still getting dense (thanks to the indian population!!)
I still remember the days I liked to download few hundred MB,and it was pathetic!! Now, I love these rates,speed, and its just a throw away price.
Also, the technology has reached and reaching all the levels of people!!
But, when are we going to reach a saturation level ? Its soon, probably in few years..like the US/UK.