It depends on where the parent commenter is living - in Berlin I was paying over 80 EUR a month for a travel card which only applied in the state of Berlin before the Deutschland ticket () - I could believe that a monthly pass for other cities (Frankfurt?) could reach 150 EUR.

( Not directly before, there was the 9 EUR ticket in summer '22, and then BVG offered their monthly ticket for 29 EUR for a while).

Even for slower trains you could easily pay well above 49€ before. Even just a montly ticket for the city where I live cost over 60€ and that still required you to pay extra for regional trains to nearby towns. That doesn't mean that 49€ is too low as both prices are subsidized (explicitly for the 49€ ticket and indirectly via infrastructure grants before).

I'm not sure exactly which former ticket they meant, but such an approx. 150€ ticket was probably not just restricted to regional transport just like the Deutschlandticket, but also only valid in a small part of the country. Prices would have varied somewhat by federal state or region. The card that gives free travel on all trains costs €380 per month (€4550/y).