Data Show '96 Held in Tokyo


The 24th Data Show '96 has successfully been held at Tokyo Big Sight in Ariake Exhibition Ground from October 14 to 17, 1996. More than 260,000 visitors were attracted to the show during the four-day exhibition period from every part of Japan as well as many visitors from overseas.
Among numerous data processing and transmission products, enhanced PHS personal station (PS) and its application products were the pioneering multimedia communications exhibits at Data Show '96.

Topics included:

PIAFS

PIAF is an organization established in October 1995 to spread PHS multimedia communications utilizing PIAFS (PHS Internet Access Forum Standard, in Vol. 1, No. 6, October 1996) system, it has 87 member companies as of October 1, 1996. PIAF had its own booth to display equipment for the on-going interconnection testing in preparation for the commercial service expected to start in April 1996.
There was also a live demonstration of 32kbps-high speed data transmission.

NTT Personal

At NTT Personal's booth, examples of many applications for PIAFS such as Internet Access, Picture Transmission etc. were introduced as well as the new PHS terminal "PALDIO" which became available this autumn.

DDI Pocket

DDI Pocket Group has announced the introduction of new wireless modem/facsimile service from the end of 1996 which provides 14.4 kbps, high-quality and versatile data transmission service at low usage fee through the existing network and could be a bridge to the forthcoming PIAFS service.
Compared with the former PHS data transmission on speech channel, media transformation function converts digital signal to analog at each PHS cell station (CS) to be able to utilize an existing NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) network for high-speed and error-free data transmission as illustrated in Fig. 1.


Thanks to this function, PHS subscribers can enjoy various high quality services such as E-mail, Internet Access, high-speed fax, PC Data File Transfer, Pager etc. by using one of the following three types of terminal equipment.

  • Integrated Terminal: All functions are integrated into one PDA (Personal Data Assistance) type terminal (PDA Type).
  • Combined Terminal: Separate PHS personal station (PS) to be used with the PC card adaptor exclusive for this (Separate Type).
  • Data-oriented Type: PC card and the PHS PS are combined into one unit (PC Card Type).
Live demonstration were conducted using Kyocera and Toshiba's terminals as outlined in Table 1.

Nifty Serve: Nifty supported DDI Pocket Group's new service and demonstrated accessing its on-line service through DDI Pocket's system.

Panasonic: Panasonic showed two types of PHS data communications tools based on its own standard. One is a PDA type (JP-P1) and the other is a PC Card type (VS-12610A), which have the capability of sending at 2.4kbps on speech channel. In case of the former, a 512KB memory card is provided for applications. The latter has 32kbps data transmission capability besides the voice at 2.4kbps. Both will be re-born to the new version as soon as the PIAFS-based system comes into service.

Terminals made by Kyocera and Toshiba are the same as those shown on DDI Pocket's booth.

As you can see from the above, next year will definitely be an innovative year for PHS Multi-Media communications in Japan and it could soon be prevalent in every country where the PHS system is adopted.