How The World Wide Web Opened Up for India in 1996
The Year is 1996. India is taking its first steps towards the Internet and World Wide Web. Motorola ISG (Information Systems Group) is tasked with introducing modems to a nascent computer market that has yet to understand the Internet. The world is in the throes of change. It is the same year that the city of Madras is being renamed Chennai.
At the same time, an agency called Goldwire in Chennai creates a nationwide campaign projecting a modem as an inseperable part of your computer’s future: A PC Without A Modem Is Like A Dog Without A Bone — the first ad says that.
In months it would become one of the first campaigns that opens India out to the world of the Internet which for all intents, began with the founding of India’s VSNL — India’s platform for international telecommunication services on its Independence Day — 15th August 2023.
The campaign ushered in the age of modems with unthinkable speeds today: 28.8 kbps, 33.6 kbps, 56 kbps modems.
