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In fact, it's not only Europe and Australasia, but Africa and South America too. Only North (and parts of Central) America and Japan do not use 900/1800 MHz GSM exclusively. Here's a list.

Soon, GSM will be enhanced by UMTS, which will allow for high speed wireless networking (2 mbit/sec), with other nifty services, making GSM even more useful than it already is.

Cheers,

Costyn.

GSM also operates at 1800 (actually 900/1800 DualBand is most common is europe)

while GPRS is a extension to GSM, both bluetooth and WAP are independent standards

There is already GSM coverage over much of the US, but it is far from complete, and presents problems to international visitors, who cannot use global roaming on their dualband GSM phones. While not exclusive to GSM networks, SMS is an extremely useful facility (nine billion SMS were sent around the world in August) that many users of non-GSM networks often miss out on (you can send SMSes to phones from many web sites for free). GSM ties in with the other popular acronyms at the moment - GPRS, WAP and Bluetooth (but not iMode - iMode is something specific to DoCoMo and their phones, while the rest of the world uses WAP).

There is more information on GSM at GSM World and the North American GSM Alliance.

is this the technology you mean?
It's stated that this technology actually bases on GSM. I can't judge if it's better then the normal GSM networks we have over here in Europe but I have to mention a few things
The thing you mention with the several differnet protocls, well, we had just that over here in europe a few years ago.
Every country had it's own standard which was used by the local company(a lot of monopolies, you are right, this has also certainly to a point hindered alot of stuff over here but things have changed).Look at this link. So GSM is actually a multinational standard and I think it is a good thing to let the providers compete by service rather than protocol because when I here switch my network provider I can keep my phone.
Still companies over here are innovating, for example one provider here is already beginnig to offer GPRS Service, another(we have 4 GSM providers here which I think is a lot for such a small country as Austria) has already offered data transfers with 28.8 kBps for 6 months now(via phone cards for notebooks, they basically just bundle several lines)
Competition is big here and so prices are relatively low, GSM at times(when normal telephones were still mostly in the hand of the state company, which has been fully privatized now)was almost the same as normal telephone calls.
I agree with you about the hazard of state monopolies but independent standards are generally a good thing.

is this the technology you mean?
It's stated that this technology actually bases on GSM. I can't judge if it's better then the normal GSM networks we have over here in Europe but I have to mention a few things
The thing you mention with the several differnet protocls, well, we had just that over here in europe a few years ago.
Every country had it's own standard which was used by the local company(a lot of monopolies, you are right, this has also certainly to a point hindered alot of stuff over here but things have changed).Look at this link. So GSM is actually a multinational standard and I think it is a good thing to let the providers compete by service rather than protocol because when I here switch my network provider I can keep my phone.
Still companies over here are innovating, for example one provider here is already beginnig to offer GPRS Service, another(we have 4 GSM providers here which I think is a lot for such a small country as Austria) has already offered data transfers with 28.8 kBps for 6 months now(via phone cards for notebooks, they basically just bundle several lines)
Competition is big here and so prices are relatively low, GSM at times(when normal telephones were still mostly in the hand of the state company, which has been fully privatized now)was almost the same as normal telephone calls.
I agree with you about the hazard of state monopolies but independent standards are generally a good thing.

is this the technology you mean?
It's stated that this technology actually bases on GSM. I can't judge if it's better then the normal GSM networks we have over here in Europe but I have to mention a few things
The thing you mention with the several differnet protocls, well, we had just that over here in europe a few years ago.
Every country had it's own standard which was used by the local company(a lot of monopolies, you are right, this has also certainly to a point hindered alot of stuff over here but things have changed).Look at this link. So GSM is actually a multinational standard and I think it is a good thing to let the providers compete by service rather than protocol because when I here switch my network provider I can keep my phone.
Still companies over here are innovating, for example one provider here is already beginnig to offer GPRS Service, another(we have 4 GSM providers here which I think is a lot for such a small country as Austria) has already offered data transfers with 28.8 kBps for 6 months now(via phone cards for notebooks, they basically just bundle several lines)
Competition is big here and so prices are relatively low, GSM at times(when normal telephones were still mostly in the hand of the state company, which has been fully privatized now)was almost the same as normal telephone calls.
I agree with you about the hazard of state monopolies but independent standards are generally a good thing.

MPPC - Microsoft Point-To-Point Compression

GSM - Global Standard for Mobile commnications (this one runs at 1800mhz, pretty standard, used throughout the world... with the notable absence of one country.)

HSCSD - High Speed Circuit Switched Data (this is a little like GRPS, however it's point-to-point based and provides more bandwidth than packet switched GPRS, but it isn't connected 24/7)

GRPS - General Packet Radio Service, (always on, packet based mobile network, ip based).

ASDF - Association of Synchronous Data Formats (the synchronous carrier format to provide a level of QoS and ensure delivery.)

LMNOP - ?? got me on that one, sounds like some protocol for binding ip to the wireless standard.

MPPC - Microsoft Point-To-Point Compression

GSM - Global Standard for Mobile commnications (this one runs at 1800mhz, pretty standard, used throughout the world... with the notable absence of one country.)

HSCSD - High Speed Circuit Switched Data (this is a little like GRPS, however it's point-to-point based and provides more bandwidth than packet switched GPRS, but it isn't connected 24/7)

GRPS - General Packet Radio Service, (always on, packet based mobile network, ip based).

ASDF - Association of Synchronous Data Formats (the synchronous carrier format to provide a level of QoS and ensure delivery.)

LMNOP - ?? got me on that one, sounds like some protocol for binding ip to the wireless standard.

The "glued together" attitude also results in the fact that once GPRS becomes available (in Europe, this will happen in just a few months), you can throw this 9210 brick into the ocean, as there is no support for it. It's better to have to dedicated devices so everything doesn't become obsolete at once.

If you care about using the net with your phone, you don't want this thing. At least if you live in Europe, where GPRS is available in just a few months. It features faster transmission and the connection is always on. When GPRS becomes available, this product will be obsolete. And by the way, there are lots of better keyboards out there, like in Psion Series 5 and Ericsson MC218.

In Europe, we'll have GPRS in just a few months. Then this product will be obsolete. GPRS offers faster data transmission and the connection is always on, so it really is worth waiting for.

It's too slow, I here you say, well GSM is the world standard, you poor backwards in the US may catch with the rest of the world in the next few years. 9.6K is availabe everywhere, 28.8k is available on a few networks, and GPRS is just starting to roll.

I personally find that 9.6k is adequate for collecting emails and some moderate surfing such as /.