Following the sale of the 2 billionth GSM phone subscription the ETSI Director General, Karl-Heinz Rosenbrock, said:

'ETSI congratulates the Mobile telecom industry for the fantastic success it has made out of transforming our World Class Standards into this global phenomenon'.

'Between our work on the GSM standard and contributions to the 3G Partnership Project (3GPP), ETSI Member organizations have now written more than 12,000 specifications and considered over 70,000 Change Requests'.

'GSM has fuelled the societal shift from place-based to people-based communications and, as an inclusive technology, is not only a success in business terms - but has also been successful in changing people’s daily lives. Put simply, it is now difficult to imagine a world without GSM'.

Work at ETSI continues on Fixed Mobile Convergence using evolved GSM 3G and ETSI TISPAN specifications to deliver a secure, converged, platform in the drive towards Next Generation Networks.