when was the first telephone service launched in india
Telecommunications in India In 1880, two telephone companies namely The Oriental Telephone Company Ltd. and The Anglo-Indian Telephone Company Ltd. approached the Government of India to establish telephone exchange in India. The permission was refused on the grounds that the establishment of telephones was a Government monopoly and that the Government itself would undertake the work. In 1881, the Government later reversed its earlier decision and a licence was granted to the Oriental Telephone Company Limited of England for opening telephone exchanges at Calcutta, Bombay, Madras and Ahmedabad and the first formal telephone service was established in the country.[15] On 28 January 1882, Major E. Baring, Member of the Governor General of India's Council declared open the Telephone Exchanges in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras. The exchange in Calcutta named the "Central Exchange" had a total of 93 subscribers in its early stage. Later that year, Bombay also witnessed the opening of a telephone exchange.[16]
Telephone exchange names As demand for telephone service grew in the postâ€“World War II period, it was foreseeable that the demand would exceed the addressing capacity of the existing system of using memorable telephone central office names as prefixes in telephone numbers. Several letter combinations had no pronounceable or memorable names and could not be used. Several North American numbering plan areas (NPAs) were divided so that more office codes became available to smaller regions. However, as the growth accelerated, the Bell System decided to implement all-number calling (ANC) and to deprecate the use of central office names to provide more central office codes to each NPA. This extended the usable numbering plan and only two area code splits became necessary between 1962 and 1981. All-number calling was phased in starting in 1958 and most areas had adopted it fully by the mid-1960s. In some areas it did not become universal until the 1980s. The Bell System published and distributed area code handbooks yearly which compiled the towns available for calling using an area code.