Celebrating 21 Years of GSM
by admin ~ September 7th, 2008 · Filed under: General
The world celebrated the 21st anniversary of GSM in Colombo yesterday, at a grand reception hosted by Dialog Telekom. Secretary General of the International Telecommunication Union, Dr. Hamadoun Touré, presided over the event as its special Guest Of Honour. Yesterday’s event and special session precedes the 29th GSM Asia Pacific Conference of the GSM Association, which gets underway in Colombo today.
GSM (Global Standard for Mobile) began in 1987 in Europe and grew rapidly from there. It differed from the analog networks that came before in that it used digital Time Division Multiple Access to serve more people with the same towers. Being a digital standard it also supported innovations like SMS, GPRS Internet and HSPA high-speed Internet, going far beyond voice. Today there are over 3 billion GSM subscribers worldwide.
The Asia Pacific region is especially important to GSM as it accounts for over 50 per cent of the world’s population and 42 per cent of the world’s GSM mobile subscribers. Asia Pacific completely dominates the growth picture with net additions of 145 million connections as at June 2008, more than four times the growth of any other region. It is notable that the anniversary is being celebrated here because Sri Lanka was the first South Asian country to introduce GSM technology in 1995 (with Dialog GSM).
With the evolution of GSM and mobile-based telephony and information, the two-day conference starting today will look at some of the challenges facing the industry in looking ‘Beyond 21’. These include anytime-anywhere solutions, looking beyond 3G, mobile commerce and regulation for tomorrow’s mobile market.
Sri Lanka and Dialog Telekom are the proud hosts of GSM’s 21st Anniversary, and welcome delegates from over 30 participating member countries. Dialog Global CEO, Anoja Obeyesekere, is the Chairperson of GSM Asia Pacific. Colombo’s selection of as the venue for this important event in the regional GSM Calendar is an indicator of the stature of the local telecommunications industry.