The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation (2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such as mobile phones and tablets. GSM is also a trade mark owned by the GSM Association. GSM may also refer to the Full Rate voice codec.
General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), also called 2.5G, is a packet oriented mobile data standard on the 2G cellular communication network's global system for mobile communications (GSM). GPRS was established by European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) in response to the earlier CDPD and i-mode packet-switched cellular technologies. It is now maintained by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
Short Message/Messaging Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile devices exchange short text messages. An intermediary service can facilitate a text-to-voice conversion to be sent to landlines.
The Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) is a third generation mobile cellular system for networks based on the GSM standard. Developed and maintained by the 3GPP, UMTS is a component of the International Telecommunication Union IMT-2000 standard set and compares with the CDMA2000 standard set for networks based on the competing cdmaOne technology. UMTS uses wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) radio access technology to offer greater spectral efficiency and bandwidth to mobile network operators.
In telecommunication, a public land mobile network (PLMN) is a combination of wireless communication services offered by a specific operator in a specific country. A PLMN typically consists of several cellular technologies like GSM/2G, UMTS/3G, LTE/4G, NR/5G, offered by a single operator within a given country, often referred to as a cellular network.
A SIM card is an integrated circuit (IC) intended to securely store an international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) number and its related key, which are used to identify and authenticate subscribers on mobile telephone devices. Technically the actual physical card is known as a universal integrated circuit card (UICC); this smart card is usually made of PVC with embedded contacts and semiconductors, with the SIM as its primary component. In practice the term "SIM card" is still used to refer to the entire unit and not simply the IC.
Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) is a standard way to send messages that include multimedia content to and from a mobile phone over a cellular network. Users and providers may refer to such a message as a PXT, a picture message, or a multimedia message. The MMS standard extends the core SMS capability, allowing the exchange of text messages greater than 160 characters in length. Unlike text-only SMS, MMS can deliver a variety of media, including up to forty seconds of video, one image, a slideshow of multiple images, or audio.
A personal unblocking key (PUK), sometimes called personal unblocking code (PUC), is used in SIM cards to reset a personal identification number (PIN) that has been lost or forgotten.
GSM services are a standard collection of applications and features available over the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) to mobile phone subscribers all over the world. The GSM standards are defined by the 3GPP collaboration and implemented in hardware and software by equipment manufacturers and mobile phone operators. The common standard makes it possible to use the same phones with different companies' services, or even roam into different countries. GSM is the world's most dominant mobile phone standard.
Customized Applications for Mobile networks Enhanced Logic (CAMEL) is a set of standards designed to work on either a GSM core network or the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network. The framework provides tools for operators to define additional features for standard GSM services/UMTS services. The CAMEL architecture is based on the Intelligent Network (IN) standards, and uses the CAP protocol. The protocols are codified in a series of ETSI Technical Specifications.
ETSI and 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards, such as GSM and LTE, define supplementary service codes that make it possible to query and set certain service parameters directly from mobile devices.
Cell Broadcast (CB) is a method of sending messages to multiple mobile telephone users in a defined area at the same time. It is defined by the ETSI's GSM committee and 3GPP and is part of the 2G, 3G, 4G LTE (telecommunication) and 5G standards. It is also known as Short Message Service-Cell Broadcast (SMS-CB) or CB SMS.
In telecommunications, a femtocell is a small, low-power cellular base station, typically designed for use in a home or small business. A broader term which is more widespread in the industry is small cell, with femtocell as a subset. It typically connects to the service provider's network via the Internet through a wired broadband link ; current designs typically support four to eight simultaneously active mobile phones in a residential setting depending on version number and femtocell hardware, and eight to sixteen mobile phones in enterprise settings. A femtocell allows service providers to extend service coverage indoors or at the cell edge, especially where access would otherwise be limited or unavailable. Although much attention is focused on WCDMA, the concept is applicable to all standards, including GSM, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA, WiMAX and LTE solutions.
SIM Application Toolkit (STK) is a standard of the GSM system which enables the subscriber identity module to initiate actions which can be used for various value-added services. Similar standards exist for other network and card systems, with the USIM Application Toolkit (USAT) for USIMs used by newer-generation networks being an example. A more general name for this class of Java Card-based applications running on UICC cards is the Card Application Toolkit (CAT).
Unstructured Supplementary Service Data, or USSD is a communication protocol used by GSM cellular telephones to communicate with the service provider's computers. A gateway is the collection of hardware and software required to interconnect two or more disparate networks, including performing protocol conversion.
In the cellular phone industry, mobile phones and their networks sometimes support concatenated short message service to overcome the limitation on the number of characters that can be sent in a single SMS text message transmission. Using this method, long messages are split into smaller messages by the sending device and recombined at the receiving end. Each message is then billed separately. When the feature works properly, it is nearly transparent to the user, appearing as a single long text message. Previously, due to incompatibilities between providers and lack of support in some phone models, there was not widespread use of this feature.
The 3GPP has defined the Voice Call Continuity (VCC) specifications in order to describe how a voice call can be persisted, as a mobile phone moves between circuit switched and packet switched radio domains.
In mobile telephony GSM 03.38 or 3GPP 23.038 is a character encoding used in GSM networks for SMS, CB and USSD. The 3GPP TS 23.038 standard defines GSM 7-bit default alphabet which is mandatory for GSM handsets and network elements, but the character set is suitable only for English and a number of Western-European languages. Languages such as Chinese, Korean or Japanese must be transferred using the 16-bit UCS-2 character encoding. A limited number of languages, like Portuguese, Spanish, Turkish and a number of languages used in India written with a Brahmic scripts may use 7-bit encoding with national language shift table defined in 3GPP 23.038. For binary messages, 8-bit encoding is used.
GSM 03.40 or 3GPP TS 23.040 is a mobile telephony standard describing the format of the Transfer Protocol Data Units (TPDU) of the Short Message Transfer Protocol (SM-TP) used in the GSM networks to carry Short Messages. This format is used throughout the whole transfer of the message in the GSM mobile network. In contrast, application servers use different protocols, like Short Message Peer-to-Peer or Universal Computer Protocol, to exchange messages between them and the Short Message Service Center (SMSC).
Data Coding Scheme is a one-octet field in Short Messages (SM) and Cell Broadcast Messages (CB) which carries a basic information how the recipient handset should process the received message. The information includes:
