After 20 years, GSM technology is still not backward

The agreement to build the first mobile network according to GSM standards was signed by 15 European phone companies in 1987 in the hope that by 2000 there will be 20 million users. But the industry needs only 12 years to reach 1 billion connections and less than 3 years later to reach 2 billion.

GSM currently accounts for 85% of the mobile market with 2.5 billion subscribers in 218 countries and territories. Every year there are 1 billion compatible phones being consumed, over 7 trillion minutes of calls made and 2.5 trillion SMS messages.

According to Robert Conway, president of the GSM Association, although research on this technology has appeared before, the memorandum of September 7, 1987 is seen as a time when the global mobile market was formed.

And Christopher Gent, a former chief executive of Vodafone, calls it 'the most important commitment in the history of telecommunications' and GSM is the 'great technological achievement of history'.

' GSM gives people 3 principles for success: mutual benefits, open standards and fair markets ,' Conway said. He predicts in the future when high-speed networks become popular and phones are smarter, mobile technology will integrate in clothing, shoes, household items and cars.

Global System for Mobile Communications (Global System for Mobile Communications) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world.It is considered as second generation mobile technology (2G).GSM is an open standard and is currently being developed by the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).

GSM mobile network, operating on 4 bands, is designed to include multiple wave partitions (cell), so the phone connects to the network by searching for the nearest cell. There are four cell sizes in GSM networks: macro, micro, pico and umbrella. Macro cells are mounted on high columns or on high-rise buildings, micro cells in urban areas, residential areas, pico cell has a range of only a few dozen meters back should be used to relay in the house. Umbrella adds to obscured areas or empty areas between cells.

In Vietnam, the first mobile call was made in May 1994. The number of mobile subscribers at that time was 090. In 1999, the emergence of prepaid subscription packages of MobiFone created conditions for middle-income people to own some mobile phones of their own.

By the end of February 2007, Vietnam had about 21.15 million mobile subscribers, accounting for 71% of the country's telephone subscribers.It is expected that in the next 5 years, this figure will increase to 36 million (70%).Vietnam currently has 6 service operators, namely VinaPhone, MobiFone, Viettel Mobile, S-Fone, EVN Telecom and Hanoi Telecom.The two most popular network technologies are GSM and CDMA.