WORLD WIDE WEB MAGIC

Internet is one of the very few General Purpose Technologies in the history of mankind, with the capability to alter societies and their economic and social structures

- AMITABH SINGHAL

The internet is 25 years old in India. Well, yes and no! Yes, because the first commercial internet access service became available from 15 August 1995, to the general public by VSNL, a government overseas communication monopoly company those days. No, because, the internet, as it existed then, was being used by a select few in a handful of scientific and educational institution networks and technical community folks from a few years prior to 1995. To that extent internet in India is older by a few years more than 25 years.

A few folks like us, at the then newly formed Email and Internet Service Providers Association, whose initial 5-6 member companies had begun to provide India’s first licensed email services and were setting up the initial private data networks approached the Chairman of Telecom Commission sometime in 1994-95, to formally allow us to offer internet services by leveraging our growing email networks.

That request to offer internet services was rejected on the grounds of uncertain security issues and likely societal implications. Meanwhile, VSNL launched its internet services in 1995. And then it took another three years of hectic advocacy and lobbying before private companies were permitted in November 1998 to start providing internet access services.

In the meantime, there was an abortive attempt by DoT to announce some form of an ISP Licenses earlier in January 1998 – I did my bit in stopping that and intervened by re-writing a new ISP license with more acceptable terms. I mention this because people must know that the policy concessions we obtained and other interventions we made, resulted in some critical internet infrastructure investments and reforms, which matter greatly in calculating sectoral contributions to the GDP growth of any country.