Fifteen years is a long time in the world of mobile technology. Ericsson's first GSM service was delivered in 1991 and the standard pledged to win over analogue users with promises of high capacity and roaming mobility. Ulf Ewaldsson, head of GSM solutions at Ericsson, explains: "Take-up was fairly slow in the beginning. Back then, GSM was mainly targeted towards business users, those who could afford it."

More than 75 percent of all global mobile subscriptions today use GSM. As handsets have become more affordable, capacity in saturated markets has increased, allowing for continued growth in highly populated areas. At the same time, GSM infrastructure has become much more economical to roll out in emerging markets where new users are subscribing in huge numbers. This is why GSM just keeps on growing.

"We can now supply enormous amounts of capacity compared with what we could do just a few years ago," Ewaldsson says. "And the penetration levels in emerging markets are still relatively low, so there is a lot of room for growth."

At present, the fastest GSM growth can be found in South America, India, Africa, Russia and other large parts of Asia. GSA figures show that GSM has a 99.6 percent market share in Africa and 80 percent in India. Latin America recently became the latest region to reach the milestone of 100 million GSM subscribers.  

"In these markets, the real challenge is to build coverage in areas where it hasn't been economically feasible to do so before," Ewaldsson says. Ericsson's Expander solution and the recent introduction of GSM on the 450MHz bandwidth provide a cost-effective response. By increasing the reach of base stations, fewer sites are required in a given network, which translates directly into lower costs.

India is a market where such solutions have proved successful. "We have been able to provide this technology in turn-key solutions for several operators," Ewaldsson says. "Infrastructure has been built in villages where it was not thought possible before."

Additionally, GSM is growing more quickly in these markets than fixed-line telephony, and a mobile phone is the first and preferred communication choice.

But it has its limitations. A GSM phone will not provide the multimedia experience of 3G that is breaking new ground for operators in new markets. But as Ewaldsson says: "It provides voice and simple data services, and that is good enough for everyman's phone."

But rather than competing with GSM, Ewaldsson believes that 3G and other mobile technologies contribute to even further growth and value. "All mobile standards are helping each other," he says. "For example, WCDMA is hitting more business users and the higher end of the market at the moment. That helps to fuel further new services that can also become available on GSM."

Ericsson has the largest market share of GSM infrastructure in the world and continues to scale new heights. The GSM on Aircraft system was launched in 2005, allowing the safe use of mobile phones in flight. Meanwhile, Ericsson is making waves with a GSM at-sea service in partnership with SeaMobile.

As Ewaldsson says: "We say we provide coverage everywhere, and these examples go a long way towards proving that."

Despite its age, GSM remains a future-proof technology that is still providing new opportunities for operators. Ewaldsson expects that the 3 billion global subscriber mark will be reached in just a few years. "There is certainly room for more growth with GSM and a very long way to go," he says.