WWW turns 15: A personal journey- Part 2

While Internet has huge advantages there are disadvantages too. Writing letters is virtually gone. People prefer to write emails than letters. The art of writing almost died until Blogs became big. I always smile when people now say "Blogs have arrived, it is going to be big". As far as I am concerned it is just another new term but for the sake of valuations people come up with jazzy keywords. My good friend Vikas Kamat launched his portal kamat.com in 1996 and his blogs 'AnthoBLOGy ' as early as July 2001. There are many such good portals which very few are aware of, mainly because they don't spend on marketing and rely on word of mouth.

While free speech is good and a must in any 'true' democratic society it can and is being misused. After the unfortunate 7/11 bombing in Mumbai [which Mian Musharraf says he has nothing to do with it..ya sure] the Govt of India did something which it had never done before - block blogs in India which were a little more patriotic than what the Govt could digest. A real bizarre and stupid move. At the end of it those 8-10 blogs got excellent "free" media coverage. Wonder if their 'valuations' have gone up and any of them got any VC funding after that.

Minors have to be protected from pornography [which is the most profitable business on the internet - do we have some figures?]. Spammers are littering the internet but then many companies are thriving on building products that fight these spammers. Internet companies find it difficult to send genuine marketing mails as everyone is being painted as a "Spammer" by the same broad brush L

Internet In India

In India Internet was launched to the public on August 15, 1995. Before that accessing internet was extremely expensive hence not popular. VSNL was the only ISP till 1998. Getting a dialup account from VSNL was very painful, one had to fill forms, stand in long queues, pay by cash and get an account. In 1996 I had written about dial up accounts, you can read here.

In November 1998, the Government ended VSNL's monopoly and allowed provisioning of Internet Services by Private Operators. The Terms and Conditions of the ISP's License were unusually liberal with no License Fee and allowed unlimited number of players. ISPs could set their own tariffs and even their own International Gateways. In 2000 India was experiencing such an Internet frenzy that Caltiger was offering free dialup accounts! Well the free lunch did not really last for long. At present India has 4.1 million internet subscribers.

Internet usage in India is still low but the growth has been encouraging since 2004. Currently Internet usage in India is limited to the urban area. Before 2004 it was limited to the 'elite'. Thanks to the dropping internet rates common man can afford to use the internet, rather today you cannot afford 'not' to use the internet. I hope what I say is true otherwise internet companies such as ours is in trouble!!

I strongly believe whatever one does it should change the lives of the common man. Sam Pitroda did that decades ago by forming CDoT and the telecom revolution started in India. Every village was connected after that revolution. I hope the same happens with the internet. The reach has drastically increased because BSNL has launched broadband services. Now we got to wait and see how many from Class B, Class C cities start using the net.

Having worked briefly at CDoT I always wanted to do something that would reach the masses. Dr. M.