FITEL Installing Public PHS System in Taiwan


First International Telecom Corp. (FITEL), a Taiwanese wireless service operator providing paging service, etc. throughout Taiwan, obtained a public PHS service license for the 1905-1915 MHz band in February 2000. FITEL is now installing the PHS system.

Fig. 1 FITEL PHS network architecture
Fig. 2 Taiwan
Table Phase 1 of FITEL PHS project plan
Commercial Operation December 2000
Service Area Taipei city, Taipei county and Keelong city
Cover area size 620 square Km
Subscriber Capacity 500,000 subscribers
Frequency Bandwidth 1905 MHz to 1915 MHz
Outdoor Cell Station 6000 sets
Indoor Cell Station 2800 sets for 200 buildings
Mobility up to 100 Km/h
Service menu Voice communications, Voice Mail, Short Message Service, 64Kbit/s Internet Access, Wireless PBX, Mobile Centrex

With the license to operate PHS throughout Taiwan, FITEL plans to provide service in the three areas of Taipei, Taichung and Kaohsiung. As phase 1 of the plan, FITEL will start up service in the Taipei area from this December. About 6,000 high-powered Cell Stations (CSs) at 500mW for outdoor use will be put up, covering 620 square kilometers, thus, 500,000 subscribers are expected to be accommodated in the Taipei area. In addition, some 2,800 CSs will be installed inside about 200 buildings for indoor use. FITEL will not only provide voice service but also such value-added services as 64 kbit/s Internet access service from the very onset of operations. From a long-term perspective, FITEL plans to build platforms for location information service, telemetry and so on, while providing such services in collaboration with content and value-added service providers. At the PHS seminar held on the occasion of the 2000 Annual General Meeting of PHS MoU Group in Singapore, Dr. Hann-Bin Chuang, Vice President of FITEL, delivered on June 7 the following speech, stressing the significance of introducing data service at an early stage.

PHS is not dead; PHS does have good features such as value-added services and high data-rate transmissions. We chose PHS and we still believe in it. The key point is that we have to provide a good service to fight against the 60% GSM penetration rate in Taiwan. The rapid increase of GSM usage all took place in the past two years. In order to show our subscribers something good and different, we have to provide them with the best quality of PHS service. When we started looking into the project, one vendor suggested us, "You can start with voice, and then think about value-added services later." I said no to such a conservative approach based on our previous market survey. Very clearly, what the subscribers need today is data service. In Taiwan, almost every college student has a laptop computer now. It is very natural that they will next want high data-rate wireless transmission. In conclusion, data application will prove to be the key to our success; however, we don't really have much time. 3G is coming, and if we don't provide the best service quality, I'm sure PHS will become a forgotten technology soon.