Investigation of the use of the global system for mobile communications (GSM) network for metering and load management telemetry

This paper presents the results of an investigation which show that the development of the GSM network as a low cost, global carrier of digital telecommunications signals provides exciting opportunities for novel applications such as the handling of power system metering and load management telemetry. As the use of GSM for telephony becomes more widespread, it is inevitable that costs will be driven lower, and it is also inevitable that this medium for the transfer of telemetry data will become very important to the electricity supply industry in the next few years. One major issue which will require to be addressed as this development takes place is the security protection of data being transferred, particularly in the radio link paths of the network.