To the days 10MB could last us for a month

Greetings!

Anytime I'm asked to reflect on my lifestyle in my younger days, one of the moments that comes to mind is how surfing the internet was absolutely cheap. Oh, yeah, if you're reading this and you had the opportunity to witness those days, your brain must have run back to reminisce about those moments.

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In those days, the early 2000s, 10MB of data was all we needed to surf the internet for a week, and it worked unlimitedly. My friends and I would compete in downloading music, and we would download all our favorite songs, fill our phone's space, and guess what? The data subscription would still be largely unused. There were times we didn't need to subscribe for data; it came freely as we recharged our phone numbers for airtime, and the free data given to us upon recharging would last forever.

In those days, smartphones were not common, so many of us used Java and Symbian phones. I remember, among the phones I used was a Sony Ericsson product, and the phone 'suffered' in my hands because it did everything it could do at that period.
Yeah, these phones had 1G and 2G networks, and the rate at which data was consumed was so slow, hence allowing us to enjoy a 10MB data subscription for a week or a month as the case may be.

Like I said earlier, most of us were not subscribing to get data; it came as free bonuses when we recharged for airtime. My dad's phone, because he didn't browse, was always full of data which came as he recharged for airtime. My siblings and I would steal his SIM card, insert it in our phones, and use it. When we were satisfied, we would sneak it back into his phone, and he wouldn’t know.

Reminiscing about those moments makes me want to go back to the past and live again at least for a year before coming back to the present. I wish it was possible.

There was one particular event that shocked me, and even today, when I remember the scenario, I'm still baffled. One of my cousins bought an MTN phone, a small button phone that browsed the internet. He used this phone to browse freely, surfing all the internet he wanted, and he never subscribed for data. He used it until the phone got damaged. That mystery shocked me, and now that I've grown, I realize it’s possible that the phone came with a large amount of data, and because data usage was low then, it lasted a very long time. Imagine now, even if a phone was gifted 1 terabyte of data, it would be used up within a month.

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I know it's not possible to have it back the way it was before due to the fast networks (3G, 4G, 5G) that we have now and many apps and sites that consume data, but I wish it was possible to travel back to the past and have a feel of those times again.

Thanks for reading.

_{This is my entry to Hiveghana prompt of the week}