Originally Posted by polonius

GSM (which stands for GLOBAL Spec for Mobile or something like that) is global, including the USA, as you note. I'm not sure how you can say it's "certainly not global," -- when was the last time you went somewhere where there was no GSM coverage? Given that you can find GSM coverage here, here, and here, amongst many other places, I think its fairly accurate to refer to GSM as "global".