GSM History, GSM Introduction

Telecom GSM Introduction and History.

By 1979, several mobile radio networks already existed worldwide. They operated on different frequency bands and were based on different standards. A mobile phone user in Britain could not use his mobile phone in Sweden, because the British and the Swedish mobile radio networks were each based on their own standards, with different signalling protocols, and were incompatible with each other.
In view of the European unification process, it became clear that mobile telephony, too, had to overcome national borders. A new European standard was due! For this purpose, the "Conférence Européenne des Administrations des Postes et des Télécommunications " established a workgroup, whose task was to work out specifications for a standard Western European mobile system. This was the Groupe Speciál Mobile, GSM, after which the new standard - the Global System for Mobile Communications - was named.