1998: When 256 Kbps Was a Revolution

What if we could make the Internet faster?

There are some moments in business that stay with us forever.

In India, the Internet was still in its infancy in 1998. Broadband was nowhere in the picture. For the majority of people, digital connectivity was a future concept.

And here we were in Madurai, asking a very different question: “What if we could push it even further?”

So, we went out and made it happen.
Because I didn’t want MAA MADURAI to wait for the future.

I introduced ISDN digital connectivity for Internet access in Madurai, making it only the 6th city in India to have this technology.

But simply bringing ISDN to Madurai wasn’t enough. I wanted to see how far we could push it – what were the limits.

That led us to an interesting piece of technology — an ISDN router from ASUS, Taiwan, capable of connecting two BRI lines and merging them into a single connection.

The result?
Internet speed of 256 Kbps
Yes. 256 Kbps.

These days, it may sound almost unbelievable.  But back then,

It moved so quickly.
It was futuristic.
And it was a statement.

We were taking technology that was still emerging globally and putting it to work in our own Madurai.

The market reacted.
We went on to capture nearly 70% market share in ISDN router-based Internet connectivity.

Think about that.