GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication
There is yet another really exciting book that I've been reading lately: GSM and UMTS: The Creation of Global Mobile Communication. It's a book on the history of GSM. From the early days at CEPT, through the creation of ETSI and the GSM MoU Organization, the 3GPP, ...
It puts the development into historical context, indicates who were the key participants at that time, political aspects of the European PTTs that initiated the project, the role of the European Commission, etc.
I've always been looking for this kind of information online anywhere, but there really is nothing that provides any level of detail. Wikipedia e.g. has only two paragraphs (which I believe to be even partially incorrect) on GSM's history. Contrast that with the many writings on the history of the Internet.
The book is accompanied by a CD-ROM with many old meeting notes and other documents from the various stages of the GSM development process.