7.8 Communications — From Telegraph to Internet

Communication^? is the transmission of words, messages, facts and ideas between people. NCERT reminds us that humans tried many long-distance methods before the modern era — beating drums, smoke signals, fire, fast runners, horses, camels, dogs and birds. The two breakthrough technologies were the telegraph and the telephone. The telegraph helped colonise the American West; the telephone became "a critical factor in the urbanisation of America" as firms centralised their headquarters in cities and located branch offices in smaller towns. In the early-mid twentieth century the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T) had a near-monopoly on the U.S. industry. Even today, the telephone remains the most commonly used long-distance mode, and cell phones, made possible by satellites, are vital for rural connectivity in developing countries.

Three Categories of Modern Communication

SVG — Telecommunication Evolution Timeline

Figure 7.7: Telecommunication evolution — each layer added new reach without replacing the old.

Optic Fibre Cables — The First Big Breakthrough

The first major breakthrough in modern telephony was the use of Optic Fibre Cables (OFC). Faced with mounting competition, telephone companies all over the world soon upgraded their copper-cable systems to include optic fibre. NCERT explains the advantages crisply: "These allow large quantities of data to be transmitted rapidly, securely, and are virtually error-free." With the digitisation of information in the 1990s, telecommunication slowly merged with computers to form integrated networks — what we now call the Internet. Optic fibre is the backbone of every undersea cable that connects continents and of every metro broadband network that brings 1 Gbps to a home.

Satellite Communication

Communication through satellites emerged as a new area since the 1970s, after the U.S.A. and the former U.S.S.R. pioneered space research. Artificial satellites in geostationary orbit now connect even the most remote corners of the globe. Their most striking property is that the unit cost and time of communication are invariant in distance — communicating over 500 km costs the same as over 5,000 km via satellite. India's record is impressive: Aryabhatt was launched on 19 April 1975, Bhaskar-I in 1979, Rohini in 1980, and on 19 June 1981 APPLE (Arian Passenger Payload Experiment) was launched through an Arian rocket. The INSAT (Indian National Satellite) system, established in 1983, is a multi-purpose system for telecommunication, meteorological observation and data programmes. "Today, weather forecasting through television is a boon."

7.9 Cyber Space — The Internet

Cyberspace^? is, in NCERT's words, "the world of electronic computerised space". It is encompassed by the Internet — the World Wide Web (WWW). It is the electronic digital world for communicating or accessing information over computer networks without physical movement of the sender and the receiver. Cyberspace exists everywhere — in an office, on a sailing boat, in a flying plane, virtually anywhere.

The Internet's growth has been unprecedented: there were fewer than 50 million Internet users in 1995, about 400 million in 2000, over two billion in 2010 and roughly 5.4 billion in 2023. The geography of users has shifted dramatically — the share of the U.S.A. has fallen from 66% in 1995 to about 25% in 2005, and now the majority of users are spread across the U.S.A., U.K., Germany, Japan, China and India. India alone had more than 700 million Internet users by 2023, the world's second-largest user base after China.

SVG — How Cyberspace Works (WWW + Internet Architecture)

Figure 7.8: Cyberspace architecture — DNS, packets and the four-layer stack that brings the web to your screen.

The World Wide Web — Tim Berners-Lee, 1989

The World Wide Web (WWW) sits on top of the Internet but is not the Internet itself. It was invented by British scientist Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in 1989. He combined three key ideas: HTML (a markup language for web pages), HTTP (the Hypertext Transfer Protocol that browsers use to request pages), and hyperlinks that let any page point to any other. With a browser any user can move from page to page anywhere in the world by clicking links — the simple act that built the modern Internet experience.

India's Internet Story — Digital India and JIO

India's broadband revolution came in two waves. The Digital India mission, launched in 2015, set out to make government services digital, connect every village by broadband, and grow electronics manufacturing. A year later, in 2016, Reliance JIO launched ultra-cheap 4G mobile data — at a stroke, India became the world's largest data market by volume. Mobile-data prices fell by >90% in 18 months. By 2023 India had crossed 700 million Internet users, with UPI handling more digital payments per month than the entire developed world combined.

Chart — Internet Users by Country (2023)

Figure 7.9: Top countries by Internet users, 2023 (approx., in millions). India is the second-largest market by user count.

7.10 International Trade and Communication — A Brief Note

NCERT closes by linking the chapter to the next: just as transport carries goods, communication networks carry the information needed to coordinate international trade — orders, shipping documents, tracking, payments. As billions use the Internet each year, cyberspace will continue to "expand the contemporary economic and social space of humans" through e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and e-governance. Together with fax, radio and television, the Internet has made the concept of the global village a reality — one where producer and consumer, citizen and government, teacher and student can interact in real time across continents.

7.11 Chapter Exercises (NCERT) — With Model Answers

7.12 Senior Pedagogy Components