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FITEL, DDI POCKET Collaborate to Deploy the First Taiwan-Japan Roaming Service With the number of tourists and business people traveling from Taiwan to Japan growing every year and the imminent kickoff of the World Cup soccer tournament in Japan, the demand for roaming services between these locations is stronger than ever. In the past, the differences in mobile systems available in these two locations have caused a lot of inconvenience to customers.
However, as of May 20, this has changed. FITEL (First International Telecom Corp.), a Taiwan-based telecommunications carrier and DDI POCKET Inc., the leading Japanese PHS operator, are collaborating to offer the first ever roaming service between these two locations, using their PHS networks. The roaming service, which will be both economical and convenient for users, enables subscribers to use the PHS J95 handset, a terminal recently launched in the Taiwanese market. To enable their phone for roaming, Taiwanese owners of the J95 will simply need to call the phone center to sign up for the service before embarking on a journey to Japan. This system will be much more convenient than in the past where users would have to complete a rental application to use a phone (GSM in Taiwan, PHS or PDC in Japan) during their stay in the foreign land. In addition, with this service subscribers can save on communications costs up to 40%. The PHS 64kbps wireless data communications service is available for both Internet access and e-mail. Also, Taiwan-based subscribers are issued a local DDI POCKET PHS phone number (prefix 070) so that they can receive phone calls from anyone, anywhere for free. As users have come to expect from PHS, the rate plan for the roaming service is very competitive and inexpensive. The application fee is NT$500 (approx. US$14.50) and the daily service fee is NT$15 (approx. US$0.44) per day. Japan local call are NT$25 (approx. US$0.73) per minute and 64kbps wireless data communications service is NT$10 (approx. US$0.30) per minute. International calls to Taiwan are NT$70 (approx. US$2.00) for the first minute and NT$64 (approx. US$1.90) for each additional minute. |
