GSM is the new digital cellular phone system for Europe, and is being adopted by other countries throughout the world. In the U.S., GSM has been moved to the 1900 MHZ Band and renamed DCS-1900. Please be aware that PCS-1900 phones are NOT compatible with GSM phones because of the different operating frequency.
Here's how it works.
Unlike AMPS and TACS, GSM uses encryption. GSM encryption keys article from the CypherPunks mailing list. GSM Security and Encryption by David Margrave. But is it secure? the A5 key apparently is not.
Racal Intruments 6111 software apparently for users of Ericsson's GSM switch.
GSM phones have a built-in alpha-numeric pager. This function is known as SMS (Short Message System). Some email gateways are operational. GIN is a dutch company offering consumer information updates (Stocks, weather, traffic advisories, etc) over SMS. Other methods are also available.
GSM is an (originally French) standard for secure, digital, cellular communications, mainly voice. Most information is not available electronically, as the European Technical Standards Institute (ETSI) makes a lot of money charging for the paper versions. While some info is available on-line, the detailed recommendations have to be purchased:
ETSI Publications Office 06921 Sophia Antipolis Cedex France Fax: +33 92 94 42 58 Tel.: +33 92 94 42 00
There are many documents, each priced at about 3000 ECU!
A postscript version of the basic technical specifications from ETSI is available by FTP
This is the FTP archive for the Cellular Digest, and much useful (but usually very technical) material can be found in the pub/doc/cellular/digest direc- tory.
A collection of technical papers on communications with a section related to GSM is available at RWTH-Aachen.
Various related standards are available at the ITU server, Gopher or http and look under Telecommunications standards / recommendations / Series M [for Mobile] recommendations. You can also search for keywords, though you won't find much under 'GSM'.
Some discussion of the cryptography and security used in GSM (A5/1) can be found at the CypherPunks web archive , where you can try a keyword search for 'GSM'.
Source code of an implementation of the European GSM 06.10 provisional standard is available by FTP with patch1 and patch2 in the same directory.
Another (apparently faster) version is at epfl.ch
Some pictures of GSM phones
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