Smart Computing Article - GIS to Gnutella

GSM is one of the leading digital cellular systems, with more than 120 million users worldwide. Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) Developed in the 1980s as a way to link cellular telephone service across Europe, the GSM is an open, nonproprietary system that lets users keep the same telephone number in nearly 200 countries. Using satellite-based roaming features, GSM has let users obtain cellular service even in areas where traditional telephone service is not possible. The project began in the early 1980s, when cellular telephone technology first began to explode in Europe and the continent was blanketed with systems—often, each country had its own system, which was rarely compatible with any other. In an environment where the continent would soon unite politically and commercially through the European Union, such fragmented cellular telephone systems made little economic or technological sense. In 1982, CEPT (Conference of European Posts and Telegraphs) formed a committee to study the issue dubbed the GSM (Groupe Special Mobile). The goal was to develop a cross-European mobile telephone system for the general public. By 1989, authority over the project moved to ETSI (the European Telecommunication Standards Institute). The first version of the standards was published in 1990, and commercial service based on the GSM standards began in 1991. Although GSM technology was developed and first used in Europe, the technology has since spread to other areas of the globe, with more than 200 GSM networks now operational in 110 countries. Cellular companies in North America developed a descendant of GSM called PCS1900 in 1994, renamed GSM1900 in 1997; by 1999, 120 million users worldwide were utilizing the GSM technology. Avoiding traditional analog systems such as AMPS (advanced mobile phone service) in the United States or TACS (total access communication system) in Great Britain, developers of GSM instead went