It is exactly twenty years ago that the first commercial lwa le gsm network was put into use. That first network was in Finland. Now is gsm, despite 3g and 4g, the most commonly used technique for mobile networks in the world.
The first gsm network was the Finnish provider Radiolinja, reports the builder of the network, Nokia Siemens Networks. It was in 1991, with a phone call between the Finnish prime minister, and the deputy mayor of Tampere, the second largest city of Finland. The Finnish prime minister called a car phone, a mobile phone that are battery a few kilos, weighed and, therefore, not in the bag included.
Gsm had already been adopted as European standard for digital mobile telephony and data. That the European standard has become, has meant that all Europeans with a phone in all European countries can call. In other parts of the world and even within some countries is that less logical. In China and the United States, for example, there are gsm networks in addition to cdma networks, the two are not compatible.
Together with gsm networks were sim-cards in use. The little cards with information about the owner, and storage space for phone numbers and text messages were provided to the switching unit easy to make. At this moment there are worldwide, 838 gsm networks, with a total of 4.4 billion customers. That is about two-thirds of the world’s population.
