Last week I wrote about the challenge posed by the so-called ‘net neutrality’ issue, whereby the European Union has just issued an important regulation to make sure that all data on the internet is treated equally and is not subject to commercial interest. Indeed, the exciting history of the internet is full of missed opportunities and exciting challenges, but fortunately it has been a crescendo of faster, better and richer technologies that have changed the way we live, in many ways for the better.

A few weeks ago the World Wide Web (WWW), that service on the internet that hosts websites and interactive services, turned 25. It was in 1991 that Sir Tim Berners Lee made public his creation at the science lab CERN in Switzerland. This novel way of communication through computers truly made the internet appeal to the public and, together with e-mail, launched some years earlier, provided the backbone of the internet as we know it today.

This summer Malta was also celebrating the 21st anniversary since the commercial launch of the first private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) locally. Those who took the plunge to try this out in the early days remember the excitement of being able to connect to the world via e-mail, the WWW and maybe IRC (a form of live chat). Such excitement could only be dented by the frustration created by the archaic (by today’s standards) phone dial-up system to connect to an ISP. Maltese internet users would wait until 6pm to take advantage of the off-peak telephone tariffs, thus creating a traffic jam that could only be stomached by the wonders that the internet had to offer, once connected that is.

Much faster speeds and always-on connections were available at the turn of the millennium with the so-called ‘broadband’ services such as ADSL via the telephone line or through the cable TV infrastructure.

This rendered the internet experience smoother and more pleasurable, and perhaps more importantly providing internet with the necessary robustness that led to the flourishing of social media, video streaming and the foundation of specialised services in different aspects of life, such as e-commerce, e-learning and e-government. Broadband internet boomed in Malta, surging from a penetration of just 12 per cent at the end of 2005 to 35.3 per cent at the end of June this year.

Most of us can no longer imagine a world without internet

The Maltese communications market has matured and is seeking new avenues for innovation. Malta has, time and time again, been certified as having some of the best e-government services in Europe though there is room for a higher take-up compared to other European countries.

All schools in Malta from kindergarten to higher and further education are making use of e-learning. E-banking has flourished and e-commerce is vibrant, though the Maltese consumer seems to be more inclined to purchase from foreign online merchants than local ones. This is reflected from the number of parcel items handled by Maltapost in recent years: suffice to say that 12,371 parcels items were handled in 2005. Ten years later this had exploded to 153,359.

Broadband internet also spurred the rise of digital television. IPTV, as television over internet is called, has mushroomed locally from just 1,934 subscribers in 2012 to 12,256 last June. Even faster broadband speeds, provided by so-called Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH), are expected to continue to encourage the take-up of IPTV with its unique features such as video on demand, catch-up TV and even greater quality than HD that cannot be offered by traditional TV reception systems even if they are in digital format.

Fixed-line broadband was complemented by significant investment in mobile services, first with the launch of GSM and SMS and subsequently with 3G and lately 4G, every time providing faster speeds and a richer experience to support the latest generation of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets that are portable computing devices in their own right. This has been an unprecedented success, so much so that in 2010 the number of mobile subscriptions superseded the number of people living in the Maltese Islands. Today there are around 573,000 subscriptions.

Even from a corporate point of view, the investment in the local communications infrastructure has had a ripple effect on different sectors of the economy. Financial services and iGaming are crucially reliant on communication services, while other sectors like tourism, transportation and creative arts are exploiting the affordances of instant communication.

No overview of the history of internet can be complete without a reference to, maybe, the most intriguing phenomenon of all: social media. A recent study by ICON and the University of Malta revealed that almost all of Malta’s internet users access social media on a daily basis and a little over more than half are influenced by social media in their purchases. Facebook and You Tube are the most popular sites.

The rise and rise of internet in Malta and around the world has been extraordinary, even though it has to face its own challenges such as issues of privacy, safety and rights of access to what has become to be regarded as a human right. One thing is sure: most of us can no longer imagine a world without internet. Can you?

Martin Debattista is a digital media researcher, educator and strategist.

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