| 1870 | India-UK submarine telegraph link via Aden by the British India Submarine Telegraph Co, a private company |
| 1872 | Eastern Telegraph Company (ETC) set up |
| 1891 | Madras-Penang submarine telegraph cable commissioned |
| 1923 | Formation of the Indian Radio Telegraph Company (IRT), offering India-UK wireless telegraph |
| 1932 | ETC & IRT merge to form the Indian Radio & Cable Communication Company (IRCC) |
| 1934 | Establishment of radio telephone service with Britain |
| 1947 | IRCC nationalised and renamed as the Overseas Communications Service (OCS) |
| 1971 | Satellite era begins with the Vikram Earth Station at Arvi |
| 1981 | Wideband IOCOM submarine telephone cable from Chennai to Kuala Lumpur |
| 1986 | OCS becomes a PSU -Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL) |
| 1987 | Indo-UAE cable |
| 1988 | Intelsat FII Earth Station on top of Videsh Sanchar Bhawan, Mumbai |
| 1990 | Home Direct telephone service to Italy, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Germany |
| 1991 | E-Mail comes to Mumbai, VSAT operations start in New Delhi |
| 1992 | INMARSAT land earth station at Arvi |
| 1993 | Video conferencing service comes to Mumbai, New Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai |
| 1994 | Global Network Service (GNS) launched |
| 1995 | Internet services come to India |
| 1997 | Fibre optic link around the globe, a high capacity underwater fibre optic cable; international ISDN facility started |
| 1997 | Largest float of GDRs by an Indian company in the international market ($527 million), listed on the London stock exchange |
| 1998 | STP-Goa H-4 VSAT station at Verna, Goa |
| 1999 | First disinvestment in a PSU by the government through a retail offer to the investing public; stock options provided to employees; GDR-II - successful offload of government stake in VSNL |
| 2000 | First PSU in India to list on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) by conversion of GDRs to ADRs |
| 2001 | Internet services introduced to many more Indian cities |
| 2002 | Disinvestment of VSNL through a strategic sale. VSNL becomes a Tata Group company (Tata stake is 45 per cent) |
| 2003 | VSNL America Inc set up in the US; VSNL gets license for ILD services in Sri Lanka |
| 2003 | VSNL acquires Gemplex, a company offering IP-based VPN services in the US |
| 2003 | Tata Indicom launched |
| 2004 | VSNL becomes the first telecom service provider to get TL 9000 certification globally |
| 2004 | Landmark deal with Bharti for 100,000 km national long distance (NLD) fibre optic backbone |
| 2004 | First Indian-owned undersea fibre optic cable |
| 2004 | VSNL acquires the assets of DishnetDSL |
| 2004 | VSNL America awarded IS 214 authorisation in the US to operate as an international facilities-based and resale carrier |
| 2004 | VSNL Singapore Pte Ltd formed to function as the holding company for VSNL overseas business and VSNL International HQ |
| 2005 | VSNL chosen network administrator of global consortium cable system SEA-ME-WE4. First for an Indian company |
| 2005 | VSNL acquires Tyco Global Network, one of the world's largest submarine cable systems |
| 2005 | VSNL acquires Tata Power Broadband from group company Tata Power |
| 2006 | VSNL acquires Teleglobe, a global telecom company in based in Canada, to become the world's fifth largest carrier of voice calls |
*In February 2008, VSNL was integrated with Tata Communications
Uploaded on February 14, 2007
