The first call was made over the network of Finnish operator Oy Radiolinja by Harri Holkeri, former president of Finland. Although the Radiolinja network covered three of Finland’s biggest cities, and there were pilot networks in Germany and Sweden as well, the description of the service as being commercial was somewhat wide of the reality. Although 01 July, 1991 was designated launch day by the GSM MoU, problems with type approval meant that there were no commercial GSM phones available. The Nokia phone used in the first call was impressive in its dimensions being 1.5 inches x 5.5 inches x 10.5 inches - hardly a handy portable device!

The problems with type approval - there were something like 1,500 tests that had to be made - were so persistent that commercial quantities of GSM phones did not really start to hit the market until 1993. The shortfall lead to the famous call from George Schmidt of German operator D2 at the Berlin GSM show that GSM stood for ‘God Send Mobiles”. The problem was eventually sorted out by the introduction of Interim Type Approval (ITA) which significantly reduced the number of tests required. George had another distinction beyond creating one of the industry’s most memorable catchphrases - he was the GSM MoU’s first American Chairman.

In reality of course GSM started much earlier than 1991. The first Groupe Speciale Mobile was established by CEPT in 1982 and tasked with finding a common cellular standard which would bring order to the chaotic situation that existed in the European analogue cellular market at the time. The Groupe comprised representatives from the only carriers then operating, the large national incumbents. It is often forgotten that there were in fact a number of technologies considered for the new European standard, and some of these were not even digital but analogue variants of existing technologies such as NMT and AMPS. In the end, not without some major disagreements, the digital technology that became GSM was chosen as the common European standard and work went ahead on developing what turned out to be one of the most complex technical standards ever created. Looking back the foresight of the GSM pioneers was truly remarkable. Virtually every electronics and communications company in Europe became involved in the massive R&D effort including some historic names such as Telenorma, ANT, Bosch and Philips which are no longer in the GSM space.  What was interesting to note as the GSM market developed was that the Asian electronics companies who had enjoyed some success in analogue cellular never really got to grips with GSM until very late in the game.

Another sign of the way in which GSM would evolve came with the formation in 1987 of the GSM Memorandum of Understanding (GSM MoU) grouping. There were fifteen signatories, twelve incumbent operators covering Western Europe, two independent operators from the UK Racal Vodafone and TSCR/Cellnet and the UK DTI. The MoU was formed so that GSM operators could work together on common issues such as international roaming, implementation timescales and standardisation. The first roaming agreement was signed between Vodafone and Telecom Finland in 1993 and thereafter, thanks to the work of the MoU in standardising the process, international roaming took off in a big way.

By the end of 1993 there were 1mn GSM customers and the industry was confidently predicting 18mn by 2000.At the ITU show in 1995 Mike Short forecast 100mn by 1999. The reality was that by 2000 the total had reached a staggering three quarters of a billion and was destined to reach the magic billion by 2003. What the founders had failed to take into account was that with the creation of GSM they had opened Pandora’s Box. From being a purely European solution GSM suddenly became a global phenomenon with new operators springing up in Asia, Africa, Australasia and the Americas. Today there are more than 690 GSM operators in 213 countries. Mike Short, past chairman of the GSM MoU, once memorably described GSM as being in ‘more countries than McDonalds.”

In many ways the unbelievable success of GSM was the result of serendipity. Those who served on the original Groupe Speciale Mobile openly admit they had no idea what they were creating and were as surprised as everyone else that GSM became a global phenomenon. In addition, the US cellular industry which dominated the early days of analogue cellular through pushing variants of AMPS worldwide, fumbled the ball in making the transition to digital, becoming ensnarled in arguments over what was the right technology. This opened the way for GSM and Europe’s champion technology has never looked back. On to three billion!
Ian Channing