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| Written by Andy Black on Thursday, 06 September 2007 | |
 Twenty years ago, an historic agreement was signed in Copenhagen by 15 telecommunications operators from 13 countries* that led to the development of the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), and a mobile communications industry that today serves more than 2.5 billion people across 218 countries and territories. The ‘Memorandum of Understanding’ agreement of 7th September 1987 laid the foundation for the first Europe-wide digital cellular system, which soon became the world’s first global mobile system as used by more than 700 mobile operators and served by thousands of suppliers today. The agreement also triggered a technology evolution path that continues today with the roll-out of more than 120 mobile broadband networks in 61 countries. http://www.gsmworld.com/news/press_2007/press07_48.shtml Watch the video trailer at http://www.gsmtwenty.com and look at the great 20 shots of GSM's role in people’s lives. I am taken by analogy that was originally used by Tom Standage in his book the “The Victorian Internet” describing the growth of the telegraph and how it could be easily compared to the growth of the internet, The parallel with the GSM network is in my humble opinion even more striking  The mobile phone and the great role the GSM agreement has had in making that happen are even more striking 4.7billion text messages send in May in the UK http://www.text.it/mediacentre/sms_figures.cfm Just look how the technology has reached into the developed and developing world and is now banging on the door of education according to members of the Handheld Learning Forum. The images of the worlds first commercially available phone motorola-dynatac-8000x and latest iphone show how things have moved on. Good old reliable GSM the answer is the network now whats the question? Happy Birthday GSM! Andy Black is an active member of the mobile learning community  (0) Leave a Comment |
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| Last Updated ( Thursday, 06 September 2007 ) |
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