Summary

  • A February 1995 provider account describes established off-line UUCP email and an Internet node still being installed; an August route trace then reached a Tbilisi host and listed Parliament machines.
  • The permanent link made connectivity visible at a small set of institutions. It did not establish nationwide access, and academic and public-access programs followed on different schedules.

On 27 February 1995, George Kashia, president of Tbilisi provider Mimosi Hard Ltd, described a business already carrying messages for customers that included the US Embassy, USAID, the United Nations and the World Food Programme. They exchanged email and Usenet conferences through off-line UUCP. Kashia said his company was still installing an Internet node. USAID had selected it to manage an Internet project for Georgia, and he expected the node to be operating within two or three months.

This was a provider’s own account, but it preserves a distinction that later “first connection” timelines can blur: international email existed before a permanent, routed Internet link.

The next clear operational trace is dated 4 August. Olivier M. J. Crepin-Leblond relayed that Georgia’s expected “full Internet link” was up, citing information from Tibor Gruber. His traceroute from Imperial College London reached crizia.sanet.ge in 15 hops. The destination answered at about 756 milliseconds on that run. The accompanying host list named SANET machines and several parliament.ge systems. That is evidence of a working path and identifiable institutional endpoints on one date. It is not a performance series, an uptime record or a count of Georgian users.

A 1997 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty account gives the link a political and organizational setting. It says a USAID grant under the Rule of Law Program, administered by the Parliamentary Human Rights Foundation, connected Parliament and other government organizations in Tbilisi through a satellite line. The project was not the only activity. Open Society organizations were installing equipment and training people; a separate NATO and EU INTAS effort helped the Georgian Academy of Sciences establish its permanent link in 1996. By early 1997, a foundation-backed center was preparing free public access and training.

Those later programs matter because they show what the first route did not do by itself.

The dates do not resolve into one clean launch day. RFE/RL places permanent access in summer 1995. A 2001 conference paper by Georgian participant Sandro Karumidze dates the first online connection to July and says the first Georgian website under the project belonged to Parliament. The August 4 message is a dated observation that the announced link was up. July may describe project commissioning; August records an external observer’s successful trace. The evidence does not establish that they mean the same administrative or technical event.

Georgia therefore did not move in one step from “offline” to “online.” A provider could exchange email through UUCP; a USAID-backed project could connect Parliament and government offices by satellite; a London traceroute could reach a SANET machine; research institutions and public centers could still need separate funding, equipment and training. Calling the first permanent link a national service would collapse these distinct states into one milestone. Its historical significance is narrower and more useful: it shows how a working international route first acquired a small, publicly visible institutional boundary.

Sources: Mimosi Hard provider update, 27 February 1995; Georgia link and traceroute report, 4 August 1995; RFE/RL, “Georgia: Internet Making Inroads,” 1997; Sandro Karumidze, “Development of Internet in Georgia,” 2001 conference paper.