Yes, you heard it right, it has been 25 years since the inception of the internet in India.
The internet in India is older than me. In 1995 when VSNL launched the internet in India, it marked the beginning of something new. Something revolutionary. The Internet has been the necessity of this generation.
Imagine in the year 2000 if I had told that you could watch a movie at home, order food without going to the hotel, pay money without touching your wallet and do all of this at the same time, you would have been laughing at me. But now if you don’t do this people laugh at you.
From getting data in kb through vast communication lines and extensive wirings all over to getting wireless superfast data in GB, the Internet has come a long way.
The Internet is like a foundation. You could build anything upon it. It seemed fascinating at that time how we could call someone or get information in front of a screen. Things started to escalate so quickly that the power of the internet became limitless.
By the year 2006, you could talk to your friends or someone unknown who doesn’t even stay in India through your PC. You all know what I am talking about, Facebook.
This was just the beginning. After Facebook people came out with more innovative ideas and we saw some crazy ideas turning into a million or billion-dollar company.
One of the sole reasons why the internet is so useful in a country like India is because of the population. At present A massive 4.6 billion people today use the internet, sending out billions of gigabytes of data over the World Wide Web.
People were smart enough to realize the potential of the internet in the 90s and turn themselves into billionaires. Google, Facebook, Twitter, PayPal, Swiggy, Uber, Amazon, and many more. This list can go on. Except for Microsoft and Apple, none of these companies existed before 1995.
Each one of them has its own specialty. Facebook is trying to connect people through various social media platforms, whereas Google is trying to do everything possible with the power of the internet. Providing you real-time data on your fingertips. Google has literally become a verb now. The growth of Amazon has become exceptional. From providing delivery in around a week or two, now you can get your delivery in one day.
Talking about giants how can we forget Reliance. The launch of Jio was the turning point in this internet revolution in this nation. Not everyone was capable to spend around 200Rs a month for 1GB of 2G data. Jio changed everything. Now we have so much data at such a low price. 20Rs for 1GB of 4G data. That’s how ridiculously low it is. The launch of Jio has helped millions across India. The farmers of our nation, the poor workers, and the lower-middle-class people everyone can enjoy the power of the internet. Online education wouldn’t have been affordable for the kids belonging to poor families if we didn’t have something like this.
Microsoft has been one of the best in the computing world and is now slowly turning into a cloud service. They all knew how important the Indian market is going to be in the near future. We are blessed to enjoy something like the internet.
The Internet is not only affecting the tech but every possible sector. Business, commerce, military, education, etc. India has possibly seen the biggest change in its education history and the internet is the reason. Online learning will soon feel like normal learning. Companies are in a race to be the best in a particular field and that is leading to better services for the people of this nation.
From searching for information on huge computers to listening to music by commanding your wristwatch, the growth in these 25 years has been exceptional. The thought of what we can achieve in the next 25 years just excites me. With technology like ML and AI, AR and VR, cloud computing, and quantum computing we will be able to do things that we could only see in movies.
Not everything can be perfect though, we have seen so many scandals in the past related to the internet. There will be bad people everywhere. Bad things are inevitable but that doesn’t mean we stop them. We try to keep things as clean as possible.
The internet has slowly turned into a data extraction tool for the tech giants of the world. We see what we think in our minds. This is the case of the modern-day internet. Think of buying a car and then your mobile will be filled with ads for cars. Questions have been raised on how secure the internet really is. So many incidents have occurred in the past which have shown the internet is not as fancy it looks like. Such thoughts have given rise to the internet which is controlled by no one. We also have a TV series dedicated to this thought.
We will get the internet which is completely free and secure, an internet which is for the people and by the people, only time can tell. But for now, all we can do is enjoy the services which we are getting by the discovery of this era. It is fascinating and who knows what lies ahead in a few years. Maybe the next article you read, you won’t even need your phone. Maybe the next time you go to concerts it would be a holographic concert.
The Internet has changed billions of lives across this nation and it will keep on changing billions more. Keep enjoying this modern marvel for the rest of your lives.