India’s First Internet Connection: VSNL’s 1995 Plan Offered 40mins Per Day Usage at Rs 15,000

When the very first commercially available internet plan was introduced to the public, it was by state-operated telecom body, Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). Back then, not only was the internet a hitherto unheard quality, even personal computers had not taken over households in India. Our PCs, back then, were limited to a select few urban households with solid financial footing, and mostly came with kilobytes of RAM and storage. In such a time, when VSNL brought the internet to India, the primitive mode of connecting to the World Wide Web was not just slow – it was also very, very expensive.

VSNL’s internet services came in five tiers – professional, non-commercial, commercial, exporter and service provider. For each tier of users, the connectivity was provided via either dial-up broadband by using the existing telephone optics, or through dedicated internet lease lines. The internet speeds varied among three tiers – the 9.6kbps dial-up, or 64kbps and 128kbps internet lines. At its most affordable, the 9.6kbps dial-up internet line from VSNL was priced at a flat annual rate of Rs 15,000, which you were supposed to pay in one instalment. Adding to this are inflation rates – publicly available inflation tools suggest over 5x inflation of the value of the Indian rupee between 1995 and 2020. At this rate, VSNL’s 9.6kbps dial-up internet connection (in today’s rupee value) would cost over Rs 75,000 – all for 240 hours of internet access each day, or an average of 40 minutes per day.