25 years of mobile revolution in India: Know when and who made the first mobile call in India
Mobile connectivity was started in India 25 years ago, that is, the first call was made from a mobile phone in the country 25 years ago. During that time, calls used to be very expensive. Let us know who made the first mobile call in India.
Mobile phone is very important in today’s era. Life cannot be imagined without it. But 25 years ago people used to live without mobile phone, used to manage their work but now life is incomplete without it. In today’s time mobile phone has become the second largest telecom market in the world.
When and who made the first mobile call in India?
Let us tell you that mobile connectivity was first discovered in India on July 31, 1995 when the then Chief Minister of West Bengal Jyoti Basu made the first mobile call to the then Union Communications Minister Sukh Ram using a Nokia phone. It is said that Jyoti Basu made this call from the Writers Building in Kolkata to the Sanchar Bhavan in New Delhi.
“25 years ago, when the Indian telecom sector was liberalised and players including Airtel emerged, no one had imagined we would have come this far,” Bharti Airtel chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal was quoted as saying in a report.
Back then, Indian consumers had to wait months to get a landline connection . Today, in just a few hours, a consumer can buy a mobile phone, activate the connection and instantly connect to people around the world, making calls.
Over the last two and a half decades, mobile phones have now been categorised as a luxury gadget for the rich and a ‘must-have’ device for the common man. The gradual decline in voice calling rates and handset costs has accelerated mobile adoption across all sections of society.
During this period, mobile tariffs have seen a significant drop. Today, consumers enjoy free phone calls, but 25 years ago, it used to cost Rs 18 per minute . At that time, both outgoing and incoming calls used to cost money.
In 1994, India licensed private telecom players and allowed them to access the market. The move led to a mobile revolution in the country. But operators incurred huge losses as they paid around Rs 27,000 crore for the licenses.
The government later changed the fixed-license fee to a revenue-sharing system to support operators .
In 2002, Tata Teleservices, Reliance Communications Limited and Hutchison operated on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) based networks, a second generation telecommunications standard. They introduced CDMA to reach the low budget segment.
In 2004 , incoming calls were made free and for the first time, the number of mobile phone users in India surpassed the number of landline users. That is, now people were moving towards mobile phones or mobile users were increasing. According to the data of Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI), after three years, the number of mobile users had increased 5 times to 233 million.
With FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) increasing from 49% to 74%, the sector received more finance which fueled growth in mobile technology and connectivity.
Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC launched its first smartphone in India in 2009. At that time, its price was around Rs 30,000.
Then in 2014, Chinese brands entered the market and sold cheap handsets to Indian consumers. Chinese brands became more popular than Indian brands like Micromax, Intex and Lava.
And on the other hand, Apple and Samsung were selling handsets to people who were looking for premium gadgets.
Did Jio’s entry have a big impact?
The industry was witnessing steady growth until Mukesh Ambani entered the industry with his Reliance Jio offering in 2016 but the entry of Jio disrupted the existing momentum .
Jio gave its customers free voice calls and data at extremely low rates. Due to which other mobile operators spent a lot and compromised their margins. But mobile operators like Aircel, Telenor had to shut shop and then only 3 players remained in this industry – Jio, Airtel and Vodafone.
Jio is the largest mobile network operator in India today, followed by Airtel and Vodafone.
So now you must have known who made the first call in India and when and it has been 25 years since the mobile revolution in the country. Today, about 72 crore people in the country have internet connection in their mobile phones and call rates in India are cheaper now than before.
