The Internet Comes To India

In 1995 India achieved what only two Asian countries, Japan and Hong Kong, had achieved till then – launch of a full-scale commercial internet service

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It was a great honour for me to take over at the helm of VSNL as it placed me at the centre of Indian telecommunication, and telecommunication, more than perhaps anything else, has contributed to humanity’s progress over the last two centuries. If man’s ability to harness the power of steam flagged off the Industrial Revolution, it was telecommunication that vastly quickened human response to events – from personal to global, connected the world, and powered more efficient trade and industry. Yes, it made warfare too more efficient, but it would also have prevented many wars by making diplomatic exchanges and negotiations much faster and easier.

VSNL itself was the culmination of 150 years of human endeavour and ingenuity.

In May 1837, Englishmen William Fothergill Cooke and Charles Wheatstone patented their electric telegraphy system, and overland telegraphy quickly became popular. In the 1850s, Constantinople (now Istanbul) in Turkey became the nodal point linking Europe with England. In March 1855, when Russian czar Nicholas I passed away in St Petersburg, the news was announced in the House of Lords in London just a few hours later. Only thirty-four years earlier, in 1821, it had taken two months for the news of Napoleon’s death on the island of St Helena to reach London.