The United States quickly is catching up to the rest of the world’s cell phone technology with the implementation of GSM technology around the country.
The Global System for Mobile Communications, or GSM, has crossed the Atlantic, and now local wireless providers such as AT&T Wireless, T-Mobile and Cingular Wireless are offering the service.
In fewer than 10 years since the first GSM network’s launch, GSM has become the world’s largest wireless service, spanning 190 countries, according to gsmworld.com.
Wildly popular overseas, GSM is the most secure wireless standard, and according to gsmworld.com is an open, non-proprietary system. GSM gives consumers seamless and standardized same-number contactability in participating countries.
Courtney Scott, retail manager for T-Mobile on Corporate Boulevard, said 72 percent of the world’s digital market uses GSM.
T-Mobile, a subsidiary of a German corporation, has the largest GSM network in the country and was the first to use the technology in the United States, Scott said.
“It’s a more advanced technology that works worldwide,” Scott said. “Every carrier overseas uses it; it makes us all more unified.”
Scott said all wireless carriers will eventually convert to GSM because it’s easier for people to make the transition between countries with the GSM system.
“It allows you to be able to transition smoothly while using your phone worldwide,” Scott said. “You can use your same phone number and same phone no matter where you are.”
Darren Black, a Cingular Wireless customer service representative, said Cingular began offering GSM service two years ago and has expanded its service to cover 95 percent of the major population in the United States.
“There’s less roaming if you have a nationwide GSM network,” Black said. “It’s a lot cheaper for the customer.”
Black said the cost benefits for GSM are passed down to the customer from Cingular, which pays fewer roaming charges to other wireless providers because of its nationwide network.
“When a customer goes out of state, instead of feeding off someone else’s towers, they use our GSM towers,” Black said.
Black said Cingular still offers its TDMA, or time division multiple access, its original digital cell phone service.
Cingular eventually will go to a nationwide all-GSM network, Black said.
“It’s cost-effective,” Black said. “The whole industry is getting into it.”
According to Cingular’s GSM service map, there are several areas around the country that are not covered at all by the new network.
Many of these areas are in the Southeast in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and North Louisiana.
Black said Cingular is expanding in these areas little by little.
Scott and Black both said a major advantage to GSM is wireless Internet and connectivity.
“Wireless Internet is a huge benefit because the system or person has the capability on the phone as well as to attach to a laptop or PDA,” Scott said.
Black said GSM works with GPRS, or general packet radio service, a new wireless Internet system that charges the customer by the kilobyte rather than the minute and is much faster.
“The speed and information you can get off GPRS is so much faster,” Black said. “If you’re doing e-mail and wireless Internet it allows you to access that at a better speed.”
Scott said she expects all wireless carriers to convert to GSM in the next two to five years.
“It definitely is the best quality. The clarity is like you’re talking on a land-line phone,” Scott said. “There is no static at all – there’s no room for static in this system.”