What is a gsm network for cell phones?

Question

What is a gsm network for cell phones?

Answer 1

Here is the simple answer.

Some phones use CDMA others use GSM.

GSM uses SIM cards and they can be unlocked which means they can be used by any carrier. GSM can also be used in Europe, CDMA cannot.

Both use differen signals (frequencies).

Here is the more complicated answer

GSM is a cellular network, which means that mobile phones connect to it by searching for cells in the immediate vicinity. GSM networks operate in four different frequency ranges. Most GSM networks operate in the 900 MHz or 1800 MHz bands. Some countries in the Americas (including Canada and the United States) use the 850 MHz and 1900 MHz bands because the 900 and 1800 MHz frequency bands were already allocated.

The rarer 400 and 450 MHz frequency bands are assigned in some countries, notably Scandinavia, where these frequencies were previously used for first-generation systems.

GSM-900 uses 890–915 MHz to send information from the mobile station to the base station (uplink) and 935–960 MHz for the other direction (downlink), providing 124 RF channels (channel numbers 1 to 124) spaced at 200 kHz. Duplex spacing of 45 MHz is used. In some countries the GSM-900 band has been extended to cover a larger frequency range. This 'extended GSM', E-GSM, uses 880–915 MHz (uplink) and 925–960 MHz (downlink), adding 50 channels (channel numbers 975 to 1023 and 0) to the original GSM-900 band. Time division multiplexing is used to allow eight full-rate or sixteen half-rate speech channels per radio frequency channel. There are eight radio timeslots (giving eight burst periods) grouped into what is called a TDMA frame. Half rate channels use alternate frames in the same timeslot. The channel data rate is 270.833 kbit/s, and the frame duration is 4.615 ms.

Answer 2

this site has all the networks by country.

http://kbs.cs.tu-berlin.de/~jutta/gsm/gs...

best answer