From GSM to UMTS

The decade of the 1990s saw the development of cellular radiocommunications, a range of systems that were first introduced in the early 1980s. In France, for example, the number of subscribers rose in less than ten years from a few hundred thousand (around 300,000 subscribers to the Radiocom 2000 7 362] and NMT-F) to almost 30 million at the beginning of 2000.

A standard, originally European, GSM [E 7 364], has been the main driver of this success, although it should not be forgotten that the starting point for the growth of this market is linked to high-performance analog systems such as TACS or NMT900. From the mid-1980s onwards,...