[pashky]

Eastern Europe already checked in, but I thought I'd add yet another anecdote.

In St Petersburg, Russia the only GSM provider had luxurious free 10 seconds, and $0.40/minute after that. Plus fixed monthly fee, of course. $0.40 was very expensive by Russia late 90s standards and at that time mobile phones were used by three (or really just two) distincitve groups: gangsters, emerging business people, and... dudes in IT.

Criminals didn't care about money, but IT crowd was crafty and resourceful. Some phones allowed to configure a beep after 9 seconds prompting you to hang up and redial. Those were valued, but it didn't stop at that - there was even a cottage industry of firmware and hardware hacks for certain models to drop the call and redial automatically.

...and then providers switched to only 5 and then 3 seconds, and $0.10/min, yet for a few more years there were still annoying die-hards who kept their modded phones and old contracts with free 10 seconds and ridiculous price, which were no longer available for new clients.