Thanks to the spread of PHS outside of Japan, it is announced that its worldwide users surpassed 100,000,000. The presentation described how this market is analyzed and will be handled with in future from WILLCOM angle.

1.   About its promotion overseas

PHS is familiarized in more and more foreign countries, especially in China. According to the announcement by PHS MoU Group, the total amount of PHS subscribers has surpassed 100,000,000 by Oct. 2006. Classified on basis of wireless system, it has grown into a global system in line with W-CDMA, which has come after GSM and CDMA. It is the first time that a Japanese-born wireless technology has developed in such prevalence.

It is believe that the prevalence of PHS is mainly attributed to the rate/cost, the service being provided by fixed-line operator, the low electromagnetic wave, and its positive feature for data communication. The rate/cost for PHS was one sixth of a mobile in China in 2004, when PHS expanded most. Besides, since the service is provided by fixed-line operators as extended circuits for the existing fixed-line network, PHS was introduced smoothly, and the first-phase investment was collected back in 25 months according to an investigation.

The PHS service in Thailand is targeted as an additional wireless service attached to an existing fixed-line, which enables a subscriber to choose to answer from either the fixed-line or the PHS when a call is received. Furthermore, PHS' merit of low electromagnetic wave is propagated through TV commercials and on Web, and targeted utilization of PHS in places like hospital is promoted in Taiwan.

All of these are resulted from active application of PHS' original features.

2.   About WILLCOM efforts

WILLCOM is carrying out various cooperative activities on PHS' overseas market in hope to realize the targets of international roaming and market expansion.

At present, WILLCOM is providing PHS international roaming in Taiwan and Thailand. The start of roaming service in Vietnam is also scheduled. Since the roaming service can be realized with only a slight change of network and terminal, the total cost is lower than that of other systems.

In addition, market development activities are succeeded as overseas PHS market also holds significant meaning for domestic WILLCOM. By adopting the business model to return the benefit earned as a result of overseas development to domestic users and partners, domestic business is backed up indirectly.

3.  About Chinese market

PHS terminals in China are mainly low-end ones since the market is expanded on PHS' low cost feature. But recently high-end market is also targeted as dual mode handset and smart phone are released.

The infrastructure investment of China Telecom and China Netcom is completely recovered by the year of 2005. It is also said that revenue created by PHS takes over 15% of the total combined revenue of the two operators. Besides, a service that combines fixed-line, broadband with PHS was started recently. PHS has in fact become a core business for both companies as was described above. It is not realistic to cease PHS service as some predicted it will happen, on the contrary, we see an inclination that PHS is to be further developed as a weapon to maintain and increase the fixed-line traffic.

The focuses hereafter for Chinese market are the improvement of service quality, the expansion of mobility restricted to respective areas now (countrywide roaming), and the introduction of high value-added service as packet data communication. Especially the effort to improve the service quality is continued, and various improvements are already made. Besides, standardization work about packet data communication is completed and trial service is carried out in several cities in China. The introduction of packet data service in near future is secured.

4.   About the development in future

WILLCOM will stick to the activities to develop new market for the introduction of PHS and to reinforce relationship with overseas PHS businesses in order to consolidate the business model mentioned above. As an example of cooperation, Japanese equipment on packet communication, its application and solution are introduced overseas, and various achievements resulted on overseas market are introduced back to Japan on the reverse. Practical merits like this can be highly expected. Especially that we are focusing on the introduction of W-SIM to Chinese market, since the mutual benefit to expand the use of W-SIM is commonly recognized.

Finally, based on the spread of PHS network as telecom infrastructure, it is expected that the Next-generation PHS system will also spread on the world market. It is decided that the target market for Next-generation PHS is not only domestic Japan, but also foreign countries.