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Sunday, July 21, 2013
Indian Telegram's last hurrah not over yet as 'taar' fails to show up
New Delhi: The 163-year old telegram service may have technically come to an end a week ago but for many who rushed to be a part of history by sending their last telegrams, the journey is not over yet.
Even after a week of booking their cherished telegrams, many - including those who used 'Taar' for the first time in their lives - are still awaiting confirmation that the messages have indeed been delivered to the rightful recipients.
"I booked eight telegrams on Sunday but none of them has reached. I rushed to book telegram, the service that I never used in my life, as it was turning in to history," says Delhi-based businessman Sanjeev Yadav.
"With so much delay in delivery, government has killed the meaning of telegram," Yadav, who stood in the queue at Central Telegraph Office for around two hours, said.
The telegram, once the fastest mode of communication, lost its sheen with advent of telephone and later with widespread of mobile phones.
Still, hundreds crammed into 75 telegram offices in the country to send souvenir messages before the service was shutdown after running for 162 years at a stretch. As a result, over 20,000 telegrams booked on last day of its service compared to daily run of 5,000.
Another individual, M S Seth expressed disappointment at not receiving telegrams till date which were booked for local addresses.
"I drove for 20 kilometres to book telegram, stood in the queue for around three hours and even in rain just because of emotions that this service will no longer exist. But after putting so much effort there has been no result. I just pray that my telegrams get delivered properly," Seth said.
No comments were received from BSNL, which was in charge of telegram service operations.
On July 15, BSNL claimed to have despatched 12,568 out of 20,000 telegrams that were booked on July 14.
On July 16, a BSNL spokesperson said all booked telegrams have been despatched with the help of using company's own staff and India Post.
Karuppiah, a 96-year old resident of Vadamalaipatti village near Trichy, received a telegram from his grandson Anand Sathiyaseelan after four days.
"This time I got telegram by post. It used to get delivered in around 2 hours even when I booked it from Ceylon (Sri Lanka) for my parents in this village. There were many telegram offices earlier but the number is now very less. The nearest telegram office to our village was closed , I think, around 5 to 6 years back," Karuppiah said on phone.
Sathiyaseelan said his grandfather ran a business in Sri Lanka and had sent first telegram in 1934 to his parents.
First 30 words in telegram cost Rs 29 and Re 1 thereafter for every word - umpteen times more expensive than short message service or e-mails used for communications at present.
BSNL decided to discontinue the services following huge gap between the average annual revenue of around Rs 75 lakh compared to cost of over Rs 100 crore.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
India's telegram service goes dark after 163 years
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
After 163 Years, India Sends Its Last Telegram
After 163 years, curtains come down on telegram service
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Indians rush to send final telegram as 163
For 163 years, lives across the vast Indian nation have been changed by the knock of the khaki-clad postal worker armed with a telegram.
One of the final messages sent via telegram. Credit: APTNBut with the reliably of landlines and increasing use of mobile phones and email, telegrams are no longer the most reliable form of communications across the huge country.
Last night the state-run telecommunications company in Mumbai sent its final telegram.
The telegram office was overrun as people tried to send one last message via the antiquated system. Credit: APTNThe last telegram was sent soon after 10 pm local time (1630 GMT) from the Mumbai Central Telegraph Office.
A woman holds her last telegram. Credit: APTNThe telegraph office was packed as Indians rushed to send their last telegram to friends and family.
One of the last messages sent via telegram. Credit: APTN More top news 
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After 163 years, India's telegraph service shuts its doors
Boy, that was a long time ago. Yeah, like... Yesterday.
No joke. The Indian telegraph service of New Delhi has been bicycling messages across the city for a hundred and 63 years. Until now, that is. Cell phones and email have finally put the telegraph office out of business.
"In villages, people would wait anxiously wondering what news each telegram brings,' explains telegraph messenger R.K Royal, 'happy news sad news, if someone's had a son, if someone has died, the price of vegetables."
Believe it or not, until just recently folks in New Delhi, India have still relied on old-fashioned telegrams to send messages. And it may not be why you think. By most definitions India is not a third-world country, especially in centers like New Delhi. But getting important messages to the out-lying villages has been historically difficult. But as technology has advanced, the telegram has finally gone the way of the telegram. And for all the reasons you might expect.
"The very fact that you have to put each word in a column,' says Rosalyn Dmello, 'that you have to have a sense of economy about the words that you are sending, and obviously because you're paying for each word."
As quaint as it may seem. Stop. There comes a time. Stop. When old technology must simply. Stop.
Monday, July 15, 2013
India bids farewell to state
It was a scene that India hadn't witnessed for decades: lines stretching around the block, hundreds deep, of customers waiting to send a telegram.
But as the state-run telecommunications company prepared to shutter its telegram service Sunday, thousands queued up at the country's 75 telegram offices for a final chance to send one of the old-school missives.
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Telegrams in India, as elsewhere, have long been on a backslide into obscurity, crowded out of the market by a flood of digital communications devices. In its last year of life, the state telegram service sent out only about 5,000 messages per day - 1.8 million a year - down from a peak of 60 million in 1985, according to The Christian Science Monitor.
"We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because SMS and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegram services, told the Monitor.
Still, particularities of Indian culture and history helped the increasingly outdated service cling to life in the country, Time reports.
In India, the telegram has owed its curious resilience to the two distinct advantages it has over rival technologies: it is already there, and it works, bearing messages rapidly across the country in places where telephone or Internet access is either nonexistent or erratic. For these reasons, it has retained a place in the country's official life. India's legendarily change-averse bureaucrats still use telegrams out of habit. Lawyers and courts use them to create written records in judicial proceedings. The army uses them occasionally to communicate with troops at remote stations. A handful of private customers use them too.
For 163 years, telegrams ferried some of India's most important political messages - helping the British squash an anti-colonial uprising in 1857 and carrying the news of Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir to London in 1947. But they have also been the purveyor of far less historic news. Telegrams historically brought notice of births and deaths to far flung family members, and they are still frequently used by eloping couples to inform their families that they have run away for love.
"They inform their parents that they are married, and fearing violence from the family, inform the police and the National Human Rights Commission," said R.D. Ram, a telegram operator in New Delhi, in an interview with the Monitor.
The demise of India's state-run service comes seven years after Western Union ended its telegram service in the United States. But even as the telecom giants bow out of telegraphy, a number of private services have stepped in to fill the - admittedly small - gap.
Canadian company International Telegram (iTelegram), which began sending telegrams in the US after the Western Union closure, announced on its website this week that it has begun a private telegram service in India as well.
Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd. (BSNL), the Indian state-owned telecommunications company, has decommissioned its telegram services as of July 2013. Does this mean the end of telegrams in India? Or, as some news outlets have reported, the end of telegrams everywhere? No....
Customers wishing to place a telegram order to India, or from India to other countries, can do so through the iTelegram web site. Service is available to over 200 countries. And yes, happily that includes India!
For many Indians, however, the closing of the government telegram service still heralds the end of an era.
"Soon this will all be history," said one Indian, who stood in line to send a telegram on Sunday, in an interview with CBS News. "Our last telegrams will become collector's items."
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India's 163 year
By Mail Today Reporter
PUBLISHED: 18:18 EST, 14 July 2013 | UPDATED: 18:18 EST, 14 July 2013
India's 163-year-old telegram service - which was the harbinger of good and bad news for generations of Indians - has come to an end.
Once the fastest means of communication for millions of people, the humble telegram was on Sunday buried without any requiem but for the promise of preserving the last telegram as a museum piece.
A large number of people, many of them youngsters and first timers, turned up at the four telegraph centres in the Capital, which have almost been forgotten in recent years, to send a message to their loved ones on the last day of the service.
Started in 1850 on an experimental basis between Kolkata and Diamond Harbour, the service was made available to the public by the British East India Company in 1854.
Though started as a Morse code service, the telegram service evolved gradually with the use of computers.
Indians send last telegrams as 163
NIRMALA GEORGE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW DELHI - India's last telegram went out late Sunday, marking the end of a service that millions of Indians had relied on for fast communication for more than 160 years.
Hundreds of people thronged the 75 telegraph offices remaining in the country to send their last telegrams to friends or family as a keepsake.
The company cancelled holidays for staff at the offices to handle the rush, Shameem Akhtar, general manager at the Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd., which runs India's telegram service, said Monday.
The company says declining revenues forced it to end the service, which had become obsolete in an age of email, reliable landlines and ubiquitous cellphones.
Some of the last-day users sent telegrams to Kapil Sibal, India's minister for telecommunications, pleading for the service to be continued.
"The losses were mounting. It was not viable to have kept it going much longer," Akhtar said. That was especially true as the number of cellphone users exploded, with 867 million subscribers as of April.
The telecommunications ministry said it lost $250 million in the last seven years and that it was time to put an end to the service.
India's telegram service began in 1850, when the first telegram was sent from the eastern city of Kolkata to Diamond Harbor, a southern suburb nearly 40 kilometres (25 miles) from the city centre.
Over the next few decades, telegraph offices proliferated, wiring the vast subcontinent with a network that became known for its speed and dependability.
At its peak in the mid-1980s, more than 45,000 telegraph offices dotted the country, with tens of thousands of telegraph workers and delivery men dispatching more than 600,000 telegrams a day. From birth and death announcements, to college admissions, job appointments and court summons, the telegram was the main way tens of millions of Indians -- in the remotest parts of the country and in its teeming cities -- received important news.
Until recently, the government used telegrams to inform recipients of top civilian awards and for court notices. India's armed forces even recognized telegrams from troops extending vacations or from soldiers' families requesting their presence at home for a funeral.
It was not immediately known what mode of communication the government will choose to replace the telegram for these types of announcements, but officials said since a lot of work was now done electronically, government departments will likely opt for email.
04:42ET 15-07-13
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