The genesis of GSM came from the recognition by all engineers that common technical standards were “a good thing” in telecommunications and a growing willingness by European Governments in 1984 to at least consider exploring a single market in telecommunications. These two sentiments were held in quite different worlds within Europe.
There was the technical world that brought together engineers at technical conferences of the European Conference of Posts and Telecommunications (CEPT). GSM was set up by CEPT in 1982. There was a political world where, in telecommunications, the old order of national state monopolies were firmly in the driving seat in 1982. Around 1984 saw the start of the break down of the old state run public mobile service monopolies (pioneered in the UK). There was a third world of the big European industrial companies firmly tied to national markets but always trying to break into the backyard of the others.
These worlds were not just countries, companies and committees – but comprised the key people who created GSM. Among those critical to the success of GSM were:
Figure 1 – Key Personalities
Figure 2 – Thomas Haug GSM Chairman
The state of these three inter-locking worlds in Europe in 1987 opened up a very brief window of opportunity to create not only GSM but to change the future direction of the cellular radio market. Four public officials from different countries that could transcend the different worlds came together and seized the moment:
Figure 3 – The Strategy Revolutionaries
…and created the mobile revolution in the process!
They had the credibility and vision created by the technical world to build upon, led by Thomas Haug from Sweden (the outstanding Chairman of GSM who created the trans-formative GSM approach to mobile standards making) together with many other engineers. Alain Maloberti (who chaired the GSM sub group dealing with the controversial radio interface), Jan Audastadt (who chaired the sub-group that turned a radio interface into a complete intelligent network platform) and Bernard Mallinder (who led a full time support team to accelerate the work) perhaps deserve a particular mention…and perhaps not forgetting the stoic Thomas Beijer, Secretary of GSM, bearing in mind that GSM worked in the era before electronic documents were common place.
February 1987 was the critical turning point. The technical world suddenly found itself going nowhere at the Madeira meeting of GSM …lobbying at the highest level of the political world (the office of the French Prime Minister) by the industrial world in France and Germany brought things to a complete standstill…GSM was poised to disintegrate…much as the analogue cellular world had fragmented half a decade earlier. It was serious.
Out of this near disaster for the project came the opportunity…
Over the next 6 months the four public officials played their pivotal role within the political world in re-shaping not just the European mobile radio landscape but (as it turned out) cellular radio across the world. In that instant in time they managed to bring the whole of Europe (countries and industries) behind GSM in a rare unity and speed.
The pivotal document was the GSM Memorandum of Understanding proposed by Stephen Temple, a DTI Official. It has been described by Sir Chris Gent (one time CEO of Vodafone) as the most important document in mobile phone history (the original is now held by the GSMA). It put GSM on a fast implementation track and instantly created the market size to generate scale economies.
The new consumer mobile industry was born.
The future success of GSM then fell to the hundreds of engineers from the technical world who swept through the new politcal/regulatory landscape the four public officials had just shaped…they came from all the major mobile radio operators and the large systems companies – Ericsson, Alcatel, Siemens, Nokia to mention just a few. Ericsson (Ulf Johansson) and Alcatel (Philippe Glotin) played particularly pivotal roles. Nokia, as everyone knows, broke through as the leading GSM mobile phone supplier. At the service level Vodafone, Orange (France Telecom), T-Mobile, Telefonica, the Nordic mobile operators and others led in creating seemless mobility first across Europe and then across the world…something we all take for granted today.
From this it is clear that there is in fact three parallel histories of GSM from the three worlds within Europe (political, technical and industrial) that came together in a common endevour to create something new for Europe. Never had Europe (by working together) leapt so far ahead of the rest of the world in any field of technology over this period. It turned out to be transformational and global. By sharing the benefits of GSM on a very open basis with the rest of the world it has driven mobile to become the most impactful electronic development on the planet over the past quarter of a Century in terms of the number of people it has benefited.
