14 DAY TRIAL // 20 years ago, 15 telecommunications operators from 13 countries agreed to develop the world's first global mobile phone system, which took the name of GSM (Groupe Special Mobile). Since then, the number of users has increased, making it by far the most used, when compared to the CDMA alternative.
More than 3 billion mobile phones use it at a global scale and the number keeps growing, with high hopes of reaching half the world's population. Moreover, this represents about three quarters from the entire number of the world's phones. At this time, GSM and 3GSM are used by 700 mobile operators in 218 countries and territories across the world.
"The 1987 agreement is widely regarded as the foundation of today's global mobile phone industry and the birth of one of the greatest technological achievements of our age", said Rob Conway, CEO of the GSMA, the global trade association for mobile operators. "The early vision of our industry created international cooperation on an unprecedented scale that has led to a socio-economic revolution benefiting people, businesses and countries throughout the world", he further added.
On the special occasion of celebrating 20 years of GSM, a seminar has been organized in Cyprus. On the event Alcatel-Lucent, Ericsson, Giesecke & Devrient, Hutchison 3G, Nokia Corporation, Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Orange, SFR, TeliaSonera, T-Mobile, Vodafone, in co-operation with ETSI have participated.
The role of this event has been that of commemorating the decisions taken in February 1987 in Madeira on the GSM deployment. The basis for this technology has been set by early radio-based devices that appeared in the 1940s based on wartime radio technology. It took about 30 years, however, for semiconductors and batteries to evolve enough for the concept to be turned into a reality with the first cellular radio systems to be available for general use.