FEW people would argue that 1995 was the year of the Internet, especially in Hong Kong.
Although the overall telecommunications industry was more than a little vibrant in Hong Kong, last year saw growth in Internet usage worldwide outperform every other segment of the technology market.
The number people in Hong Kong with access to the Internet has increased to an estimated 100,000, and the number of companies licensed to provide Net access went from one to 52 last year alone.
That is not to say that the territory started 1995 with just one Internet service provider - it had about seven. All but one, however, did not possess a Public Non-exclusive Telecommunications Service (PNETS) licence, which led to action against them by the Commercial Crime Bureau in March.
That action alone was probably the single most publicity-generating event in local Internet news and helped in no small way to bring the Net into the public eye.
And there it stayed, with more media coverage being dedicated to the Internet by the end of the year than to the entire technology industry ever before.
