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GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. GSM phones are used by over a billion people across more than 200 countries. The ubiquity of the GSM standard makes international roaming very common with "roaming agreements" between operators. GSM differs significantly from its predecessors in that both signalling and speech channels are digital, which means that it is seen as a second generation ( 2G) mobile phone system. This fact has also meant that data communication was built into the system from very early on. GSM is an open standard which is developed by the 3GPP.From the point of view of the consumer, the key advantage of GSM systems has been early delivery of new services at low costs. For example text messaging was developed first for GSM. The advantage for network operators has been the low infrastructure cost which is caused by open competition. The primary disadvantage has been that GSM's radio network is based on TDMA technology, which is considered less advanced than competing CDMA-based systems. Practical performance figures are rather similar, however,
GSM has retained backward-compatibility with the original GSM phones. At the same time, the GSM standard continues to develop and packet data capabilities were added in the Release '97 version of the standard with GPRS. Higher speed data transmission has been introduced by providing a new modulation scheme with EDGE.
1 History
The GSM group ("Groupe Spécial Mobile" ( French) 1, 2, 3 and 4) was founded in 1982. The name of the system comes from the name of this group, though later the decision was made to keep the initials but to change what they stood for. Originally the group was hosted by CEPT. The technical fundamentals of the GSM system were defined in 1987. In 1989, ETSI took over control and by 1990Events January January 3 Former leader of Panama Manuel Noriega surrenders to American forces. January 7 The Leaning Tower of Pisa is closed to the public due to safety concerns. January 9 Lt Gen Bazilio Olara Okello The man who led the coup aginst Dr Apo the first GSM specification was completed and came to over 6,000 pages of text. Commercial operation began in 19911991 like 2002, is a palindromic year. It also has the same calendar as 2002, including Easter on March 31. It is a common year starting on Tuesday. Events January January 2 Sharon Pratt Dixon is sworn in as mayor of Washington, DC becoming the first blac with Radiolinja in FinlandSuomen TasavaltaRepubliken Finland ( In Detail) ( In Detail) National motto: None Official languages Finnish and Swedish Capital Helsinki President Tarja Halonen Prime minister Matti Vanhanen Area Total % water Ranked 64th 337,030 km² 9. 4% Population Tot.
In 1998, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) was formed. Originally it was intended only to produce the specifications of the next (third, 3G3G (or 3-G) is short for third-generation mobile telephone technology. The services associated with 3G provide the ability to transfer both voice data (a telephone call) and non-voice data (such as downloading information, exchanging email, and instant me) generation of mobile networks. However, 3GPP also took over the maintenance and development of the GSM specification. ETSI is a partner in 3GPP.
2 Market situation
More than one billion people use GSM phones as of 2004, making GSM the dominant mobile phone system worldwide with about 70% of the worlds market. GSM's main competitor, CDMA2000CDMA2000 is a 3G mobile telecommunications standard, one of the approved radio interfaces for the ITU's IMT-2000 standard, and a successor to 2G CDMA ( IS-95, branded cdmaOne . The underlying signaling standard is known as IS-2000. CDMA2000 is an incompat, is used primarily in the United States, although it was seeing increased, but limited, worldwide adoption as a stepping stone to a 3G standard when WCDMA did not appear to be fully functional. As WCDMA networks have begun to take off, at least in high density markets, GSM's rate of expansion may slow, this seems likely to take some time, however.
