New Delhi: On this day, exactly 20 years ago, a telephone call was made. It changed the way we communicate for ever and ushered in a communication revolution in India.
The then Union Telecom Minister Sukh Ram and the then Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu spoke to each other using hand held mobile phones on July 31, 1995. It was a first for India.
The call made in July 1995, between Writer’s Building in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and Sanchar Bhavan in New Delhi was carried over Modi Telstra’s MobileNet service. That cellular call inaugurated MobileNet service in Calcutta.
Modi Telstra was a joint venture between India’s Modi Group and Australian telecom giant Telstra. The company was one of the eight companies licensed to provide cellular services in India. Two licences were awarded each for the four metropolitian cities.
Telecomminications in India has come a long way since 1995. At the end of May 2015 the total number of telephone connections in the country crossed the one billion mark. Of the billion phone connections a overwheling 975.78 million connections were wireless or mobile.
