The definition and development of the GSM system has been one of the great successes of European cooperation in recent decades. A system defined jointly by all European countries has been adopted, along with its successors, by all the countries and operators on the planet, and has developed in such a way that it now affects the daily lives of billions of people and has become an indispensable tool for them.
Beyond the technical aspects, the birth of GSM was only made possible by the desire of a number of countries to move towards a common standard rather than launching independent systems. This « political » aspect is just as important as the « technical » one.
In the 1980s, at the DGT, it was Philippe Dupuis who steered the whole mobile strategy in France, and was therefore the pillar of these agreements. To sum up, we successively had :
– (A) A Franco-German agreement in July 1983, to choose a common analog mobile radio system; (later abandoned to focus solely on GSM)
– (B) A second Franco-German agreement, signed in July-August 1985, to work together on defining a digital mobile communications system within the framework of GSM standardization, and to jointly launch and finance experimental programs designed to test the various possible concepts;
(C) An exchange of letters between France and Germany on the one hand, and the Nordic countries on the other, in March-April 1985, informing them of Franco-German intentions and offering to exchange experimental results if the Nordic countries undertook something equivalent;
– (D) A tripartite agreement, in June 1985, between France, Germany and Italy to work together to define a digital mobile communications system within the framework of GSM standardization, and then to implement it;
– (E) An extension of the previous agreement to the UK in spring 1986.
– And finally, in September 1987, an MoU between 17 signatories representing 13 countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom), committing them to completing the standard whose initial elements had just been approved, to defining the operational elements enabling effective implementation (e.g. the principles of exchange during international roaming), and to launching the system commercially in their countries by 1991. This agreement was then extended, first to four additional countries (Austria, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Turkey) in 1991, then progressively to all user countries, within the framework of what became the GSMA. This document and the extension are already available on the Internet.
GSM_FRENCH_GERMAN_COOPERATION_1507_1983_FR_6p
GSM_BI_PARTITE_AGREEMENT_1507_1985_DE_15p
GSM_LETTER_PTT_TO_SCANDINAVIA_1503_1985_FR_4p
GSM_LETTER_SCANDINAVIA_TO_PTT_0404_1985_FR_4p
GSM_TRI_PARTITE_AGREEMENT_2006_1985_FR_8p
GSM_QUADRI_PARTITE_AGREEMENT_1804_1986_EN_6p
GSM-MoU (1991-09-24) extension (1)