Internet in India: 25 years journey and things you might not know
India celebrates its 74th year of independence, the country has reached yet another milestone. This day, twenty-five years ago, Indian citizens accessed the Internet for the first time.
With more than half a billion internet users, India is one of the biggest and fastest-growing internet economies in the world, second only to China—be it in terms of the number of internet connections or the volume of apps downloaded. But the foundations of the internet in India were laid down just over three decades ago, in 1986, through the Education and Research Network (Ernet) Project.
From Rs 5,000 for 9.6 kbps in 1995 to Rs 7 for 1GB in 2020
According to a report from August 15, 1995, the basic tariff for a single user was Rs 5,000 per month for a 9.6 kbps dial-up connection for 250 hours of usage. Fast-forward to today, and India has some of the lowest mobile data prices in the world at Rs 7 per GB. And, while accessing the Internet was reserved for a few elites in 1995; today, India has more than half a billion Internet users.
We are all connected, Underseas!
Data sent by users across the Internet often travels overseas to reach its destination, to be more precise ‘underseas’. Around 99 percent of transoceanic data moves through undersea cables. This accounts for phone calls, text message, and Internet usage. One can say that underwater cables are the invisible force that drives the Internet as we know it today.
The Internet allows us to share files or connect with people around the world without any effort. However, this does not mean that your action does not impact the environment. While a single action like sending a mail or searching the Internet has a very small impact on the environment, when you scale that up to the over 4.1 billion Internet users, the numbers add up.
Life before Google:
Google has become a integral part of out routine in today’s life. Google is the go-to search engine of choice for a vast majority of Internet users.
However, the first search engine, named Archie was launched in 1990, followed by Veronica and Jughead. Google didn’t arrive on the scene until 1998. While Archie, Veronica, Jughead, and Google were all search engines, all of them worked very differently. Google just happened to have the most effective method, and the rest is history.
At 91Gbps, NASA’s Internet connection is 13,000 times faster than the average user in the US.
These 25 years will be a speck in the near future
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