Having 150,000 telephone exchange lines in 1947, India is now the world’s second largest telecommunications market with 1,200 million telephone subscribers.
Automatic Telephone Exhibition at the Indian Industry Fair in 1955; (Photo: Getty Images)
CAlcatta has somehow been an intrinsic part of India’s telecom story. It was from the city to Diamond Harbor that the first experimental telegraph was introduced in British India in 1850. Nearly a century and a half later, when mobile telephony landed on Indian shores, on July 31, 1995, the then Chief Minister of West Bengal, Jyoti Basu, was first called by then Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram. , on Nokia cell phones.
When India gained independence in 1947, the country had 150,000-odd telephone exchange lines, and state-run agencies under the Department of Posts and Telegraphs operated the area. The telephone remained a status symbol rather than a utility item, with the number of connections increasing from just 80,000 in 1948 to 980,000 in 1971, 2.15 million in 1981 and 5.07 million in 1991.
Top image: A cellphone tower connects rural Rajasthan, 2015; (Photo: Purushottam Diwakar)
In 1981, the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi signed a contract with the French firm Alcatel CIT to merge with the Indian firm ITI, to build 5 million lines per year, but this did not come to fruition. It was at the behest of Rajiv Gandhi that technocrat Sam Pitroda established C-DOT (Center for Development of Telematics) in 1984 as an autonomous R&D body. The following year, the Department of Telecommunications was separated from the Department of Posts and Telegraphs. A year later, Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) was set up to handle telecommunication services in Mumbai and Delhi, and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) was set up to handle overseas services. The year 1994 saw the birth of a National Telecom Policy, and the advent of mobile telephony further revolutionized the telecommunications landscape. The sector acquired a watchdog in the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) in 1997. Since 2002, select private players have been allowed to provide both basic and cellular service.
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Today India is the second largest telecom market in the world after China with 1,181 million subscribers. The country is now on the verge of introducing 5G telephony, having recently completed the auction for spectrum. n