The last telegram ever is about to be sent
By Harold Maass | 10:58am
On July 14, someone somewhere in India will tap out what is being called the world's last telegram. India's state-owned telecom company, Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited, has been holding out as other countries around the world retire their antiquated telegraph services. Now, after delaying the move for two years, the business operating what is considered to be the world's last telegraph service is finally ready to pull the plug, saying telegrams are no longer commercially viable in the age of digital communications.
India's telegram service had been upgraded in recent years — clerks now type up messages on computers to be sent via telegraph, instead of using Morse code. But it still didn't work. "We were incurring losses of over $23 million a year because [text messaging] and smartphones have rendered this service redundant," Shamim Akhtar, general manager of BSNL's telegraph services, tells The Christian Science Monitor. There are still some private companies that offer telegram-style message message services. But the closing of India's state service is being called the end of the telegraph era.
Of course, few people are shocked that India is giving up on a technology that got its start nearly 170 years ago, when Samuel Morse sent the first telegraph message in Washington in 1844. "We're not sure if it's more surprising to learn that the last telegram in the world will be sent next month... or that people are still sending telegrams somewhere," says Ruth Brown at Newser.
Others are taking a different lesson from this telegram news. Matthew Yglesias notes at Slate that India lags far behind most countries in cell-phone use — just 26 percent of the population owned mobile phones last year. "All in all a valuable reminder," Yglesias says, "that alongside the thriving wired India you read about in Tom Friedman columns there's a vast and still overwhelmingly rural and low-tech country out there."
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http://theweek.com/article/index/245752/the-last-telegram-ever-is-about-to-be-sent
= new reply since forum marked as read
...unless they still have their circa 1930's equipment. 
R.I.P.
