Movistar have a 3G network with UMTS technology, and offer services over GSM in places without 3G coverage.

Indoor coverage is also supported by GSM and may be achieved by using an indoor picocell base station, or an indoor repeater with distributed indoor antennas fed through power splitters, to deliver the radio signals from an antenna outdoors to the separate indoor distributed antenna system.

UMTS and GSM / EDGE can share a Core Network ( CN ), making UTRAN an alternative radio access network to GERAN ( GSM / EDGE RAN ), and allowing ( mostly ) transparent switching between the RANs according to available coverage and service needs.

Between 2007 and 2009 all three Finnish carriers begun to use 900 MHz UMTS in a shared arrangement with its surrounding 2G GSM base stations for rural area coverage, a trend that is expected to expand over Europe in the next 1 – 3 years.

In addition, almost all UMTS phones are UMTS / GSM dual-mode devices, so if a UMTS phone travels outside of UMTS coverage during a call the call may be transparently handed off to available GSM coverage.

GSM Association Permanent Reference Document AA. 39 ) as the ability for a cellular customer to automatically make and receive voice calls, send and receive data, or access other services, including home data services, when travelling outside the geographical coverage area of the home network, by means of using a visited network.

Celcom claims its dual-band GSM ( 900 / 1800 MHz ) coverage has reached over 99 % of Malaysia's populated area in 2006, and 100 % through satellite coverage.

In 2009, the 3G coverage covers most major towns where there is a telephone exchange and either HSDPA or EDGE services within radius ( GSM UMTS maximum allowed range ) with GPRS as basic data coverage.

This results in the lack of coverage for GSM authentication based phones in the Eastern Asian and Caribbean region, as stated on the coverage map:

Also, GSM, digital and analog cellular networks provide good coverage in Bacolod City and other areas, including international roaming.

The original error correction used in GSM was designed to work at the limits of coverage and in the worst case that GSM will handle.

Telenor Mobil established GSM coverage in 1995, and in 2004 the Svalbard Undersea Cable System opened, providing fiber optic cable connection to the mainland.

Because the antenna may be mounted on a high tower, coverage may extend up to distances of fifty kilometres, This is even helpful especially when there is no signal in a GSM mobile phone.

They offer a GSM network from coast to coast in Canada's provinces, and an HSPA + network with newer technology but slightly less coverage.

Since its inception, the Fido network runs on GSM 1900 and offers coverage in major urban areas in Canada.

GSM telephone and FM radio coverage is carried into the tunnel with break-in facilities over public broadcasts in the event of an emergency.

In 2007 Coastel was merged with Petrocom and SOLA Communications to form Broadpoint Inc. and the network was converted to GSM.

The network was completely converted to GSM and its in all Spanish territory.

While this was OK for Europe, it meant that GSM could not cover large, sparsely populated rural areas of Australia cost effectively.

EDGE was deployed on GSM networks beginning in 2003 – initially by Cingular ( now AT & T ) in the United States.

Gibtelecom was also prevented from having roaming agreements with Spanish GSM networks so its mobile phones did not operate in Spain.

The GSM standard was developed as a replacement for first generation ( 1G ) analog cellular networks, and originally described a digital, circuit switched network optimized for full duplex voice telephony.

This was expanded over time to include data communications, first by circuit switched transport, then packet data transport via GPRS ( General Packet Radio Services ) and EDGE ( Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution or EGPRS ).

The world's first GSM call was made by the Finnish prime minister Harri Holkeri to Kaarina Suonio ( mayor in city of Tampere ) on 1 July 1991 on a network built by Telenokia and Siemens and operated by Radiolinja.

Also this year, the GSM Association was formed.

In 2001 the first UMTS ( W-CDMA ) network was launched and worldwide GSM subscribers exceeded 500 million.

The first HSUPA network was launched in 2007 and worldwide GSM subscribers exceeded two billion in 2008.

The first phone to use the newest version of Google's open source OS, Android 2. 0, was released on November 2, 2009 as the Motorola Droid ( the GSM version launched a month later, in Europe, as the Motorola Milestone ).

However, this conclusion may have been incorrect, as the license fee, at least in the case of renewal by Mobilink GSM, was paid in installments over a period of three years.

As the key supplier of core and access networks to MegaFon, Nokia Siemens Networks was responsible for the HD voice implementation, which is also a world first for a commercial GSM network.

In 1993 GSM was demonstrated for the first time in Africa at Telkom ' 93 in Cape Town.

The SMS concept was developed in the Franco-German GSM cooperation in 1984 by Friedhelm Hillebrand and Bernard Ghillebaert.

The GSM is optimized for telephony, since this was identified as its main application.

The first proposal which initiated the development of SMS was made by a contribution of Germany and France into the GSM group meeting in February 1985 in Oslo.

This proposal was further elaborated in GSM subgroup WP1 Services ( Chairman Martine Alvernhe, France Telecom ) based on a contribution from Germany.

The result was approved by the main GSM group in a June ' 85 document which was distributed to industry.

SMS was considered in the main GSM group as a possible service for the new digital cellular system.

The material elaborated in GSM and its WP1 subgroup was handed over in Spring 1987 to a new GSM body called IDEG ( the Implementation of Data and Telematic Services Experts Group ), which had its kickoff in May 1987 under the chairmanship of Friedhelm Hillebrand ( German Telecom ).

SMS, for instance, supports message lengths of 160 characters at most ( using the GSM 03. 38 character set ).

Wave files can also contain data encoded with a variety of ( lossy ) codecs to reduce the file size ( for example the GSM or MP3 formats ).

AMPS and D-AMPS have now been phased out in favor of either CDMA2000 or GSM which allow for higher capacity data transfers for services such as WAP, Multimedia Messaging System ( MMS ), and wireless Internet access.

As part of the introduction of mobile phone competition in Australia, the Australian government mandated GSM as the new standard for mobile networks, and required that Telstra close the AMPS network by 2000.

Unlike the GSM protocol, the DECT network specifications do not define cross-linkages between the operation of the entities ( for example, Mobility Management and Call Control ).

Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution ( EDGE ) ( also known as Enhanced GPRS ( EGPRS ), or IMT Single Carrier ( IMT-SC ), or Enhanced Data rates for Global Evolution ) is a digital mobile phone technology that allows improved data transmission rates as a backward-compatible extension of GSM.

EDGE / EGPRS is implemented as a bolt-on enhancement for 2. 5G GSM / GPRS networks, making it easier for existing GSM carriers to upgrade to it.

Today EDGE is supported by all major chip vendors for both GSM and WCDMA / HSPA.

# REDIRECT Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution

France currently has 4 mobile networks, Orange, SFR, Bouygues Télécom and Free all of which are licensed for GSM and UMTS.

GSM ( Global System for Mobile Communications, originally ), is a standard set developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute ( ETSI ) to describe protocols for second generation ( 2G ) digital cellular networks used by mobile phones.

In 1986 the European Commission proposed reserving the 900 MHz spectrum band for GSM.