India's Tryst With Telephony

The country’s wireless telephony journey has been remarkable in many ways. The sector is now hurtling at a brisk pace to its next transformation

- Sandip Das

In the mid-1960s, my father a senior government official was assigned a telephone at residence. Despite being officially told that the installation had been rolled into action, it took its own time. Therefore, the day the black Bakelite masterpiece arrived there was some pandemonium. As a grateful family, we feted the proverbial linesman with generous doses of tea and snacks out of sheer disbelief and emotional gratitude.

The list of ‘family and friends’ to be called had been drawn up much earlier and as soon as the dial tone was detected and the ‘messiah of connections’ had departed, the tryst began. Most recipients of our calls were of course, affluent and influential people as it was only that section of society that had the means to have those copper wires strung across to their abodes.

What followed was a bit of an annoying series of events, as capricious neighbours suddenly befriended us in hordes and slipped into a steady stream, to make that one emergency call. Dad, the conscientious official, had to take palliative action and swoop down hard to remind us that it was primarily for official purposes and that our generosity needed to be curbed given the prospect of an unsavoury monthly telephone bill, which if not settled on time could lead to an insensitive swift disconnection.