GSM Celebrates Tenth Birthday in Switzerland

GSM telephony in Switzerland celebrates a special birthday on Saturday, 1st March 2003. Ten years ago, Swisscom Mobile (at that time still Telecom PTT) launched the NATEL D network. What began in 1993 with just a few thousand customers has since enjoyed a real boom: on the Swisscom Mobile network alone, more than 3.5 million customers now use the network to make and receive calls.

The term NATEL was created in 1978 as an abbreviation of Nationales Autotelefon [national carphone], and has been an unexpected success story ever since. The first digital mobile communications network in Switzerland, the 900 MHz GSM network was launched commercially in March 1993 with the name NATEL D.

The key milestones in the NATEL D success story:

1993: Commercial launch of the NATEL D network in Switzerland with the prefix 079; at this stage the 900 MHz GSM network is only available in urban areas and along the main transport routes.

1995: Telecom PTT launches SMS.

1996: Switzerland's first prepaid mobile product is launched under the name NATEL easy.

1997: The GSM 900 network is merged with the GSM 1800 networks in Geneva, Zurich and Basel, creating Switzerland's first dualband network. November sees the 1,000,000th customer registered on the NATEL D network.

1998: Two more mobile phone licences are awarded as part of the liberalisation of the Swiss telecommunications market.

2001: HSCSD (High Speed Circuit Switched Data) is launched, providing higher data transmission rates on the GSM network.

2002: GPRS (General Packet Radio Service) is available to all NATEL subscribers from February onwards. With GPRS, data is transmitted in the form of packets. The first MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service) messages are sent in Switzerland in June. MMS makes it possible to send pictures, sound or longer, formatted texts via mobile phone. At the end of 2002 there are more than 5.5 million active mobile lines in Switzerland, and GSM coverage is guaranteed in over 99% of Switzerland's populated areas."

Posted to the site on 3rd March 2003