The GSM plenary is a conference held every six months in which all the signatories to the GSM MoU from across the world participate along with the various equipment vendors who support the GSM standard and the telecom regulators of different countries in which GSM is used for cellular mobile telephony. The last conference of the plenary was held in Warsaw, Poland, a few months ago.

Among other things, the plenary discusses issues related to the future course for the GSM technology and issues related to interconnection among the operators who use the standard. Besides, it sets up sub committees to look into various aspects of the technology and discusses reports submitted by the committees.

The GSM MoU is a non-profit association comprising of all the cellular operators from around the world who use the GSM technology for providing their mobile services. At present there are over a 100 cellular operators from countries in Asia, Europe, Australia and Latin America who are signatories to the GSM MoU.

The India interest group of GSM MoU is an association of all the domestic cellular operators who are signatories to the global GSM MoU. Indian cellular operators account for a significant number of signatories to the GSM MoU. In India, there are 14 operators who provide cellular services in 18 circles and eight operators who provide the services in the four metros who are signatories to the GSM MoU. GSM is a digital standard developed in Europe that is used by a number of operators across the world for mobile telephony. It was initially developed in the 1980s as an alternative to the American standards such as TDM/TDMA that were essentially based on analogue technology. It is understood that the GSM technology by virtue of being digital is far superior in terms of clarity and security than the standards based on analogue technology.