I remember my first internet connection which I took in the year 1999 and I took the first internet connection in a village (Malayinkil) in Kerala. Those days only VSNL (Owned by the Government of India those days) was the only service provider in Kerala. To get a connection, I had to send an application form to Chennai and it took more than a month to get my login details. It was a dial up connection and the speed was just 56kbps but very less than that practically.
Those days the most popular email was Hotmail and Yahoo. To get connected to the internet, I used to wake up at 4 am and try. During day time it was something impossible. To download a 1mb file was something I had to think and it took almost an hour to finish it and mostly when I try to open it the file would be corrupt.
I was using a Intel Pentium 3 processor, 4 GB hard disk and those days that was the best configuration available and the operating system I used was Windows 95 which was stable. I started an internet cafe and a mail service. I used to charge Rs 80 per hour and I used have all my systems booked. I had to charge so much because those days we had to pay for telephone call per minute.
My Mail Service – There were lots of old parents with kids living in different parts of the World in the Village where I was living. My email was used to receive emails for the parents or relatives here sent from different parts of the World. I used to print those emails and deliver it to the Addressee. Even they could reply back by just send me the letter written on plain paper on their own language. I used to scan it and email it as an image attachment to any email address at a very nominal charge. This service was very useful for old people who did not know how to use internet.
After few months there were new service providers in Kerala, like Satyam and ETH and things started changing, but all were dial ups. The speed was better and the connectivity was easier and getting reliable. Now I hear that BSNL is the most preferred internet service in India. When even I come to India, I use the Reliance Net Connect which is really a great service with high speed. India has gone very far from those days when I started using computer and Internet and now the rate of growth is also remarkable.
