From: Steve Schear <azur@netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Sep 1997 10:40:38 +0800
To: Martin Minow <cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
Subject: Re: what is a PKS phone? (Re: Notes from the Cypherpunks September Bay Area Meeting)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSD/.3.91.970916190021.29172B-100000@mrburns.iosphere.net>
Message-ID: <v03102804b044f068d938@[10.0.2.15]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



>>Could be a typo for PCS, which is similar to GSM but uses the 1.9 GHz band
>>instead of 900 MHz (GSM) or 1.8 GHz (DCS). Unfortunately, I don't think
>>there are dual-mode phones yet.
>>
>
>I think Cynthia is correct (I was transcribing Eric Hughes' Japanese
>"trip report"). Eric was talking about a very small micro-cell phone
>extremely popular with Japanese teenagers.

I think its more likely a typo for PHS, or Personal Hand-Phone System, a
Japanese micro-cellular system.

--begin
Churn Hits Japanese PHS Providers, Too

Astel/DDI/NTT Personal

09/12/97 The US isn't the only region facing problems relating to churn. In
Japan, the PHS providers have been swamped with an avalanche of
cancellations according to a South China Morning Post report. Sources at
three PHS companies, Astel, DDI and NTT Personal, say the cancellations are
a reaction to excessive promotion last year when the US$300 telephones were
handed out for as little as a yen each. "People who should never have
subscribed to a portable phone service were enrolled and now they are
canceling," DDI's Junichi Takahashi said. In addition, August is typically
a month for student cancellations, a large segment of the PHS subscriber
base, though one analyst said the quality of the service was poor.

The report indicates that hundreds of thousands of cancellations almost
cancelled out new orders last month, resulting in the lowest net monthly
increase to date of 62,000 units.

Analysts were not entirely convinced by the explanations offered. Deutsche
Morgan Grenfell analyst Naoki Sato said, "The PHS phones are of lousy
quality; you often get busy signals or else no signal at all and you cannot
use them in cars or trains, so people have begun switching to cellular
phones."

He said although some analysts expected the PHS system to perish within two
years, he thought it would survive as a tool for mobile computing.
--end

--Steve