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GPRS
GSM
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GSM
GSM (Global System for Mobile communications: originally from Groupe Special Mobile) is the most popular standard for mobile phones in the world. Its promoter, the GSM Association, estimates that 82% of the global mobile market uses the standard. GSM is used by over 3 billion people across more than 212 countries and territories. The difference between GSM and its predecessors lies in digital signaling and speech channels, and is thus considered a second generation (2G) mobile phone system. This has also meant that data communication was easy to build into the system.

The ubiquity of the GSM system makes international roaming very common between mobile phone operators, enabling subscribers to use their phones in many parts of the world. This has been an advantage to both consumers (who benefit from the ability to roam and switch carriers whilst abroad without switching phones) and also to network operators (who can choose equipment from any of the many vendors implementing GSM).

GSM also pioneered a low-cost (to the network carrier) alternative to voice calls - the Short Message Service (SMS), which is now supported on other mobile standards as well.