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Global Standard for Mobile Communication (GSM) is currently the most popular wireless voice technology in the world. Its promoter, the GSM Association, estimates that the GSM service is used by over 2 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories. Its ubiquity makes international roaming very common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of the world. GSM differs significantly from its predecessors in that both signaling and speech channels are digital call quality, and so is considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication were built into the system using the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
It is a second-generation communication standard that transmits using the 900 MHz and 1800 MHz frequencies in Europe, Asia and Australia, and the MHz 1900 frequency in North America and Latin America.
The key advantage of GSM systems to consumers has been higher digital voice quality and low cost alternatives to making calls, such as the Short message service (SMS, also called "text messaging"). The advantage for network operators has been the ease of deploying equipment from any vendors that implement the standard. Like other cellular standards, GSM allows network operators to offer roaming services so that subscribers can use their phones on GSM networks all over the world. Newer versions of the standard were backward-compatible with the original GSM phones. For example, Release '97 of the standard added packet data capabilities, by means of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS). Release '99 introduced higher speed data transmission using Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE).
GSM is by far the most popular cellular communication standard in most of the world’s emerging wireless markets, including India and China.
History of GSM
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