Technical data

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GSM
GSM, GPRS, UMTS what do all of these expressions mean and what possibilities are
there for data communication?
Technical descriptions often contain abbreviations and acronyms. We have chosen
to use the technical designations and abbreviations, which although are usually in
English have become industry standard.
The history of GSM
At the beginning of the eighties there were numerous analogue systems in use within
Europe of varying quality. However, it was quickly realised that the analogue technolo-
gy would not satisfy future requirements for efficient communication. Consequently
the Groupe Spéciale Mobile (GSM) was formed; this took place in Vienna in 1982.
The group was given the task of creating a mobile system that would offer a high audio
quality at a low cost.
In 1989, the European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) took over
responsibility to continue the development of GSM. The acronym GSM took on a new
meaning, Global System for Mobile communications.
GSM makes the wireless transfer of voice/text/images between different types of
equipment possible, but only if that equipment is within the coverage area of a net-
work operator’s base transceiver station. After standardisation, the number of users of
GSM-equipment has increased explosively and then primarily within voice applications,
at the beginning of 1994 there were 1.3 million subscribers, this has now risen to 1024
million throughout the world (February 2004).
A large increase in use is now being seen within industrial M2M applications
(Machine to Machine). This, for example, can be a question of transferring data or
alarms from basic slave units to a controlling system, or the transfer of data
from/between parking meters. This area of application is almost unlimited and there
will be a rapid development of different types of GSM equipment to cover future
needs.
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