by Tim Katoga
Many customers bid their farewells to their last commercial telegraph operation, which is closing in the face of competition from both the internet and mobile technology.
Most Sunday afternoons, one would be hard-pressed to find anyone at the Central Telegraph Office in New Delhi, but on the day the telegraph was shut down, thousands of people crowded telegraph offices around India to send the country’s last telegrams, as the government shut down the 163-year old service on. The more the technology evolves every day, the more and more people are using and relying on it. It’s quick and easy to use.
Most of the people who crowded the office were young and have grown up in the age of mobile phones and e-mails, the technology that eventually helped make the telegram obsolete. Some think that with the amount of people that crowded outside the office, the telegraph service would never have been shut down had it seen crowds like this through the years.
More than 1,000 workers’ help across India will no longer be needed. This will mean that some will be jobless, some will either retire or be transferred to other departments within state-owned telecommunications company BSNL, which will continue its focus on expanding Internet and mobile phone services across India.
