🌍 From Telephone Line to 5G: A Journey Through Telecommunications
In the 90s, when I was in elementary school, computer class was programming a turtle to draw squares on screen. Internet didn’t exist in my life. The magic was getting that turtle to follow instructions.
A few years later, everything changed: the modem connected to the phone opened a door to the world. To browse you had to listen to the metallic beep of the connection and, meanwhile, no one could use the line. It was slow —56 kbps— but enough to send an email to another continent or play an online game. In my head it was magic; in reality, it was the beginning of a journey that would forever transform our way of living and communicating.
📞 The 90s: when Internet occupied the phone line
The telephone connection was like a dirt road. Your computer had an address —the IP— and, to reach another house in the world, data traveled from cable to cable, passing through exchanges, routers and switches, until finding the correct address. Behind every “hello” you wrote in a chat there were kilometers of copper, dozens of intermediate equipment and protocols that decided the exact route.
Speeds: up to 56 kbps (downloading a 3 MB song could take 15 minutes, and if it was slow up to 30 minutes).
Typical route: PC → modem → operator exchange → edge router (PE) → national network → international links.
⚡ The 2000s: the jump to broadband
In the early 2000s, Internet stopped being a luxury. With ADSL and then cable modem, we went from waiting hours to minutes.
- ADSL: up to 1 Mbps, using the same line but freeing the phone.
- Cable modem (HFC): 2–8 Mbps, much more stable.
- WiFi at home: the first wireless routers freed PCs from the cable.
Telcos began deploying MPLS (Multiprotocol Label Switching), which works like a highway with exclusive lanes: voice on one side, data on another, video on another. This is how modern quality of service was born.
I remember downloading music in minutes instead of hours, and feeling that was the future.
🚀 The 2010s: the video decade
In the 2010s, fiber optics became widespread in many countries and speeds made a leap: from 10 Mbps to 100 Mbps in just a few years. Smartphones came to stay, and with them, mobile data demand exploded.
The most revolutionary thing was video: YouTube, Netflix, Spotify. To sustain that wave, operators began installing CDNs (Content Delivery Networks) in their own networks, reducing distances and latencies. Instead of your favorite series traveling from another continent, many times it was delivered from a data center within your own city.
It was like going from national roads to international highways with digital shopping centers where everyone wanted to enter at the same time.
🌐 The 2020s: the digital megalopolis
Today we talk about home connections of 500 Mbps or even 1 Gbps, and 5G on mobile with millisecond latencies. Global traffic already exceeds 5 zettabytes annually (5 million million GB).
For something as everyday as a video call to work, your voice and image cross in seconds a network formed by routers, switches, firewalls and submarine cables that cross oceans. It’s a network of thousands of nodes working in sync, like a megalopolis where every message finds its exact path in milliseconds.
📘 Mini-glossary to understand Internet
- IP: your house address in the digital city.
- Router: the mailman who decides the best route.
- Last mile: the street from the main avenue to your door (fiber, copper or coaxial).
- Firewall: the guard who checks who enters.
- MPLS: the highway with exclusive lanes within the operator’s network.
🔮 Final reflection: from magic to engineering
In just 25 years we went from listening to the noise of a 56 kbps modem to having gigabits at home and 5G in our pocket.
That magic that seemed inexplicable today I understand as what it is: millions of hours of engineering, planning and human deployment.
And, just like in the 90s we discovered Internet, today we live a new wave: artificial intelligence. Behind it there is also invisible infrastructure —servers, chips, cables, energy— that supports everything that seems like magic.
The journey hasn’t ended. It’s just changing destination.
📊 Technical milestones timeline
1990s – Dial-up
Speeds up to 56 kbps. Internet over telephone line, exclusive connection (you couldn’t talk and browse).
2000s – Initial broadband
ADSL up to 1 Mbps, cable modem of 2–8 Mbps, first WiFi routers. Appearance of MPLS in backbone networks.
2010s – Fiber and video
Fiber optics up to 100 Mbps in homes. Smartphone explosion. Massification of CDNs (Netflix, YouTube, Google).
2020s – Digital megalopolis
FTTH fiber with 500 Mbps – 1 Gbps. Mobile 5G with latencies <10 ms. Global traffic exceeds 5 zettabytes annually.
📚 Recommended readings
The Invention of the Internet - Inventor, Timeline & Facts – History.com
A well-explained chronology about the military origins of the Internet and its evolution.
https://www.history.com/articles/invention-of-the-internet
A Brief History of the Internet – Internet Society (in English)
Detailed and written by protagonists of its development. Covers from packets, ARPANET, to regulatory evolution.
https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet/
History of the Internet – Wikipedia (in English)
Very complete article, with historical, technological sections and detailed references about the pillars of the Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet
🎥 Recommended video
Internet and Telecommunications History – Educational documentary about the evolution of networks and their impact on modern society.
✍️ Claudio from ViaMind
Atrévete a imaginar, crear y transformar.
