The digital chatter of smart meters could soon replace human communications on the GSM mobile phone network

The digital chatter of smart meters could soon replace human communications on the GSM mobile phone network

From the the physics arXiv blog

Excerpt

How Intelligent Machines Could Take Over the GSM Network

Posted: 07 Nov 2014 07:08 AM PST

The digital chatter of smart meters could soon replace human communications on the GSM mobile phone network, say network engineers.

Back in 1991, the then Finnish prime minister, Harri Holkeri, made a phone call that would go down in history, at least as far as trivia fans are concerned. This was the first call made using the GSM phone protocol that has since gone on to dominate mobile telecommunication networks around the world. In 2008, more than three billion people were connected to this network.

GSM is a so-called second generation technology and since then, it has been superseded by 3G and 4G networks. Now telecommunications policymakers around the world are considering switching off the GSM network and finding other uses for the radio frequencies allocated to it. The Chinese city of Macau is set to be the first, having planned to phase out its GSM networks from June next year. That may be a shortsighted decision. Today, German Corrales Madueňo and a few pals at Aalborg University in Denmark, say that the GSM system should become a dedicated network for intelligent machines to communicate with each other. They have calculated the capacity of such a network and how it could become the communications backbone of a new generation of smart meters.

SNIP

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