NTT Personal Group (totaling nine companies) launched PHS commercial service in July 1995 and gained 1.54 million subscribers by the end of December 1996. The total number of public Cell Stations (CS) installed by NTT Personal Group will reach 251,000, including nearly 120,000 CS by NTT Central Personal, by the end of March 1997.
The principal service concept of NTT Personal Group is PHS Seamless World, which illustrates that a PHS terminal can be used as a digital cordless telephone at home, public portable telephone in public spaces and also a wireless PABX terminal in an office environment. In order to achieve this concept, NTT personal Group has developed a variety of new products and services, as follows.

(1) Home Antenna - Active portable repeater Home Antenna is the brand-name of an active portable repeater, which receives radio waves from a public CS and retransmits them to extend the radio coverage. It is designed to extend the reach of CS radio waves into homes, offices and other indoor environments, where public CS is not intended to cover. The airlink between a CS and a Home Antenna is operating in public mode and the one between a Home Antenna and PHS terminal is operating in private mode. The product is especially popular for young customers who have not yet subscribed to existing PSTN services. The weight of the device is about 110grams and power can be provided by an AC adapter or battery.

(2) PHS/Pager dual mode terminal
This dual mode terminal is already available. A combination of the two-way communications feature of PHS service and the wide coverage of paging services make the best solution for PHS /Pager users.
Please note that this pager system is based on the Japanese pager system. The weight and volume of the terminals are about 140grams and 140cc, respectively, which is slightly larger than an average PHS terminal.

(3) Office Station Service (OSS)
OSS is the brand-name of a wireless PABX system, which NTT Personal has jointly developed with several PABX venders. With Paldio terminals, customers can make/receive calls through a wireless PABX system at the office as well as through a public CS. In this case, a call through OSS is in private mode (PSTN-tariff) and a call through a public CS is in public mode (PHS tariff).

(4) Voice-Mail/Call Transfer
In the case that a PHS terminal is out of coverage or turned-off, a call is automatically transferred to a voice mail center or a preregistered destination terminal. Presently, more than half of NTT Personal customers are using these additional services.

(5) 32-kbps Data Service
NTT Personal will begin 32-kbps data service based on the PIAFS standard in April 1997. The service is expected to be one of the most competitive approaches to digital cellular technology. A variety of new applications will be provided such as wireless Internet access, mobile computing and still picture transmission, etc. New Paldio terminals with 32-kbps data capability are already available. In 1997, NTT Personal will make continued efforts to provide top quality service to their customers, with a special focus on 32-kbps data service.