It was a call from Writers’ Building in Calcutta to the telecom minister in New Delhi that marked India’s mobile service debut. That was on July 31, 1995. Commercial services rolled out soon thereafter, opening up a world of mobile telephony for Indians.
Many firsts followed as India notched up the numbers exponentially. Over time, mobile teledensity overtook fixed line, and the country moved aggressively towards becoming a mobile-first nation. In 2009, we crossed the 500 million mobile subscriber mark. And in 2015, we did 1 billion.
Along the way, the internet emerged, a network of networks that revolutionised communications. This “global brain”, which used an internet protocol suite for communication and sharing data, opened up endless possibilities and changed the way we consumed news, information and entertainment. My first exposure to mobile internet was when, to my complete wonderment, I got to see a cricket match, live streamed, on a small phone screen, every ball, every wicket captured in real time. Around the time the internet was becoming a thing (we are now, of course, talking about the “internet of things”!), I got the opportunity to create content for a “website”. It was fascinating stuff. A whole World Wide Web of pictures, videos, information and data unfolded before me.
Over the years, the entire telecom lexicon has interestingly altered. We no longer “dial” a number, nor do we have a “dial tone”. We tap, touch and click. We talk about bytes, giga bytes and tera bytes. Wearables, smartphones and camera phones. We are exploring new universes – metaverse, low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit. New realities – augmented, virtual and extended. New realms and new learnings – the cloud, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Talking about artificial intelligence, India proudly co-chaired the AI Action Summit in Paris this month. For a country with just 2.2 per cent teledensity in 1999, it has come a long way indeed. Today, we have more than 1 billion telecom subscribers. We have competition and choice, with mobile portability playing an enabling role. Copper is being replaced by fibre with notionally limitless capacities.
There’s more. We have among the lowest tariffs in the world, among the highest consumption of data, and have achieved one of the fastest 5G roll-outs globally. Digitalisation has transformed businesses and informed every aspect of life (Covid-19 was a major disruptor, bringing in a new work-from-home paradigm). We are increasingly “making in India”. We are aiming for a seat at the global telecom table, taking a leadership interest in developing 6G standards and pitching ourselves as a global data centre hub.
Of course, it’s not been an easy journey. The sector has been through its fair share of trials and tribulations. It has dealt with litigation, changes in licensing regimes, financial stress, operator exits, and more. There was the dotcom bubble and bust, the cancellation of licences, and unsustainably high bids for spectrum.
There are still many wrinkles to be ironed out, many challenges to be surmounted. But there are also many new opportunities to explore and aspirations to pursue.
Over the past few years, we have seen the massification of mobile services. It’s now time for the densification of networks and the democratisation of connectivity.
Coming to tele.net…
It was at the turn of the millennium that our story began, in January 2000. It was an exciting time to be starting a magazine on the telecom sector and it timed well with the events unfolding around us.
Liberalisation reforms had been unveiled some five years prior, stirring the telecom pot and generating excitement in the industry – but also a lot of uncertainty. What followed was a roller coaster ride as the sector tried to find its feet.
For us at tele.net, it was an adrenaline rush too, trying to keep pace with the sector’s dizzy pace, making sense of the ever-changing dynamics, policy pivots, and technology shifts. It’s been an enjoyable journey too with some great learnings.
For me personally, it has been an exciting 25 years, getting a granular view of telecom developments and capturing the nuances of the sector in print.
Putting together this special anniversary issue, in particular, has been an interesting exercise. The issue, built around the theme, “Connecting a Billion Lives”, tracks the long journey of the sector from monopoly to liberalisation to near-ubiquitous connectivity. It brings together the views and perspectives of the very people who shaped India’s telecom policy, regulatory and business landscape. It’s also given us a chance to revisit stories from our archives and retrace the events that led up to modern day telecom.
We hope you will enjoy browsing through these pages.
