What is "base station subsystem"

n. (context telecommunications English) that section of a GSM network which is responsible for transmitting radio signals to and receiving radio signals from a mobile phone

The base station subsystem (BSS) is the section of a traditional cellular telephone network which is responsible for handling traffic and signaling between a mobile phone and the network switching subsystem. The BSS carries out transcoding of speech channels, allocation of radio channels to mobile phones, paging, transmission and reception over the air interface and many other tasks related to the radio network.