Happy birthday to India’s first ever mobile phone call

It was 19 years ago today, July 31, 1995, when the first mobile call was made in India, on a Nokia 2110 mobile on a Nokia-supplied network.

The then Union Communications Minister, Sukh Ram, dialed from the Department of Telecommunications in Delhi and spoke to the then West Bengal Chief Minister, Jyoti Basu, at Writer’s Building in Calcutta.

Indian telecom history was written with this first ever GSM call in 1995, the very year in which Nokia started connecting people in India.

From the humble Nokia 2110 that weighed half a pound to the jaw-dropping, feather-weight Lumias that we use today, mobiles have become omnipresent.

But can you guess what the calling rates were during those early days? Much more expensive than now…

In 1995, mobile calls cost around 50 cents per minute, with incoming calls being charged, too! Owning a mobile was a luxury and being able to make and receive calls on the go gave you entry to the elite club.

Today call rates have dropped to as low as 5 cents per minute. Almost every Indian owns a mobile and is part of the world’s telecom revolution thanks to the availability of the range of affordable and high-end models.

India is the second-largest mobile phone market in the world with a whopping 933 million subscribers, a figure as recorded by the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). What started as an innocent revolution- to bring the souls of two individuals together via the medium of mobile has been connecting people ever since and has touched and imapacted uncountable lives.

It is now almost impossible to imagine our lives without our Lumias. A single tap and you’re connected to your friends and your family.

When did you make your first mobile call?