In the late 1980s, mobile phones were a mess. Europe alone had nine incompatible standards. A businessman in London couldn’t use his phone in Paris. Car phones weighed as much as a bag of cement, and batteries died before you finished your first meeting.
They built the single most successful technical standard in human history. Because of them, you can land in 220 countries, turn on your phone, and it just works . They killed vendor lock-in. They made mobile phones affordable. And they did it before Silicon Valley realized the internet could be mobile. gsm mafia
Then came the solution: GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications). And behind that solution came a shadowy, powerful, and deeply effective group of men known internally as The GSM Mafia . In the late 1980s, mobile phones were a mess