The Internet Didn't Get the Message: The Telegram's Not Dead

Search for 'telegram' in Google News, and you'll turn up a bunch of headlines the internet adores—the kind about how it's making older once-pervasive tech obsolete.

Once the internet got a whiff of a Christian Science Monitor story about the impending demise of the telegram—India's state-run service was closing up shop, ostensibly because it had been disrupted by smart phones and the internet—all bets were off. Activate online echo machine:

"Last Telegram Ever Will Be Sent In India Next Month," goes the Huffington Post.

"End of an era for the telegram," declares Fox News online.

"Last telegram ever to be sent July 14," says CBS.

Except it's not really true. The telegram is alive and well, despite the SEO-friendly fairy tales we tell ourselves about the rise and fall fo technology. Fox News might actually have the headline that hews closest to reality, for once—the era of the telegram is definitely over, but the technology is still chugging along at the same rate that it more or less has been since the advent of the cell phone.

Ars Technica reached out to the still-functioning International Telegram company, and Colin Stone, the director of communications, explained that the telegraph wasn't going anywhere.

"Somehow they got the impression that this meant the end of telegrams worldwide," he told Ars. "We'll still offer services in India, even though the state-run service is closing."

Again, it's easy to see why the internet flocked to the story. Yet it also seems the reason we were so eager to buy the story wasn't just the neatness of its 'last-ever' frame, but a little implicit condescension for the developing world, too. India, that poor and dusty country, was finally getting rid of the most outdated technology imaginable (subtext: India still used the telegram!). It must mean the end of the telegram if even India's closing up shop.

But, of course, it's not just India that still uses the telegraph.

"Italy still has a printer and Telex line in every post office," Stone told Ars. "And people still send loads and loads of telegrams there. It's a state-run telegraph service, so I don't know if it's profitable or not. But it's exactly as the service was run in India and the same as it's been for 50 or 60 years."

So the telegram marches on, and first-world Italy's government is holding onto the technology longer than India's. International Telegram still sends telegraphs in 200 countries, including the United States.

As usual, technological progression is more complicated than you'd think; we don't ceremoniously unplug a once-ubiquitous communications network in one fell swoop. Old tech hums along in places we don't necessarily expect it to, and the new is often adopted en masse just as unpredictably. Don't believe me? I'll send you a telegram to prove it.