A Brief History of GSM<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
The GSM story starts in 1982, when the Confederation of European Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT) formed the Groupe Speciale Mobile (GSM) to design a pan-European mobile technology. The European Commission endorsed the GSM Project in 1984. One year later, France, Italy, the U.K. and West Germany signed a joint agreement to develop GSM. Early 1987 brought an agreement on the basic parameters of the GSM standard, and the GSM Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was promoted. A total of 15 members from 13 countries committed to deploying GSM through the Pan European Digital Conference. Validation trials in 1988 proved that GSM technology was viable, and in 1989 the Groupe Speciale Mobile became a technical committee within the European Technical Standards Institute (ETSI), which helped to define GSM as an internationally accepted digital cellular telephony standard.
Network operator Radiolinja in Finland placed the first GSM call in 1991. The following year, Telstra Australia became the first non-European operator to sign the GSM MoU, and Telecom Finland and Vodafone (UK) signed the first international roaming agreement. During the same year, the first SMS using GSM was sent.
By 1993, 32 networks were using GSM in 18 different countries or territories, and the first true hand terminals meeting the standard were launched commercially. By 1994, there were more than a hundred GSM operators and a million subscribers around the world. Within a year those figures rose to 117 networks and ten million unique users. By 1996, the first GSM networks were deployed in Russia and China, while prepaid GSM SIM cards appeared in Italy. During this same year, 167 networks were officially using GSM in 94 countries and GSM had fifty million subscribers. In 1997 the USA alone had 15 GSM networks, and by 1998 there were over a hundred million GSM subscribers globally.
In 1999 GSM gained another layer, called the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). WAP was viewed as the advanced data companion to GSM and other wireless technologies. WAP trials began in France and Italy the same year, and next-generation (2.5G) GPRS systems were deployed for the first time. In February 1999, NTT DoCoMo launched its i-mode mobile Internet service in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Japan.
