GSM Mobile Phone
GSM stands for Global System for Mobile Communications. It is the most popular standard for digital cellular phones in the world. It has a very strong presence in Europe.
Over the last decade, GSM has been the backbone of the phenomenal success in mobile telecoms which continues to evolve to meet new demands. Its great strength is its international roaming capability which gives consumers a wonderful service in about 160 countries.
It is sold as “the latest technology” in many countries; this technology is older than CDMA. The two major advantages from this technology are fraud prevention and roaming readiness.
Know about History of GSM Technology
Analog cellular telephone systems were experiencing growth in Europe during the early 1980s, but also in France and Germany. Every country had developed its own system, which was incompatible with everyone else’s in operation and equipment.
In 1982, European Posts and Telegraphs (CEPT) formed a study group called as the Group Special Mobile (GSM) to study and to develop a pan-European public land mobile system. The system had certain criteria:
- Low terminal and service cost
- Good subjective speech quality
- Support for international roaming
- Support for range of new services and facilities
- Ability to support handheld terminals
- ISDN compatibility
- Spectral efficiency
GSM specification’s Phase I were published in 1990. In mid-1991, Commercial service was started and there were 36 GSM networks in 22 countries by 1993. Over 200 GSM networks are operational in 110 countries around the world. In 1994, there were 1.3 million subscribers worldwide, which had grown to more than 55 million by October 1997.
Various Services provided by GSM
- Telecommunication services can be divided into teleservices, bearer services and supplementary services using the ITU-T definitions.
- Telephony is the most basic teleservices supported by GSM.
- There is an emergency service, where the nearest emergency-service provider is notified by dialing three digits (similar to 911).
- A variety of data services is offered. Its users can send and receive data, at rates up to 9600 bps, to users on ISDN, Plain Old Telephone Service, Circuit Switched Public Data Networks and Packet Switched Public Data Networks using a variety of methods and protocols like X.25 or X.32.
- Data services include Group 3 facsimile, in ITU-T recommendation T.30, supported by use of an appropriate fax adaptor.
- A unique feature of GSM is the Short Message Service (SMS) for short alphanumeric (up to 160 bytes) messages. Messages can also be stored in the SIM card for later retrieval.
So, this is all about GSM technology. But we will also discuss later that GSM is good or CDMA?
