Overview of the Global System for Mobile Communications John Scourias UniversityofWaterlo o
[email protected] o.ca May 19, 1995 1 History of GSM During the early 1980s, analog cellular telephone systems were exp eriencing rapid growth in Europ e, particularly in Scandinavia and the United Kingdom, but also in France and Germany. Each country develop ed its own system, whichwas incompatible with everyone else's in equipment and op eration. This was an undesirable situation, b ecause not only was the mobile equipment limited to op eration within national b oundaries, which in a uni ed Europ e were increasingly unimp ortant, but there was also a very limited market for eachtyp e of equipment, so economies of scale and the subsequentsavings could not b e realized. The Europ eans realized this early on, and in 1982 the Conference of Europ ean Posts and Telegraphs CEPT formed a study group called the Group e Sp ecial Mobile GSM to study and develop a pan-Europ ean public land mobile system. The prop osed system had to meet certain criteria: go o d sub jective sp eech quality, low terminal and service cost, 1 supp ort for international roaming, ability to supp ort handhald terminals, supp ort for range of new services and facilities, sp ectral eciency, and ISDN compatibility. In 1989, GSM resp onsibilitywas transferred to the Europ ean Telecommunication Standards Insti- tute ETSI, and phase I of the GSM sp eci cations were published in 1990. Commercial service was started in mid-1991, and by 1993 there were 36 GSM networks in 22 countries, with 25 additional countries having already selected or considering GSM [6].