While the iPhone is offered by carriers around the globe, all of them rely on the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol.

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Americans are at a disadvantage when it comes to cell phones overseas, because most of the world uses a GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard, Schukai said.

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The GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) standard is used throughout Europe, making it a much less fragmented market for mobile communications than the U.S., and mobile phone penetration is particularly high in Northern Europe.

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The development follows an Indian court order that went in favor of Ericsson, which had sued Micromax for using some of its patented technology to make mobile phones that function on the global system for mobile communications platform.

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In 1993, NTT DoCoMo, Japan's principal mobile-phone carrier, opted for a technical standard called Personal Digital Cellular (PDC), which was incompatible with the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), the standard adopted by most of the rest of the world.

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The camp's re-engineering awards went to a group that developed a technique to alter the ID numbers on Global System for Mobile Communications cell phones and to another team that found a way to defeat a biometric fingerprint scanning system.

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