Benjamin and Curt,
there are a lot of things PHS and WLAN share.
- both are designed both in-door and out-door, local and public
- both have some 100 m radius, and relatively cheap basestation
- both for Internet/Web access (an accidental success for PHS)
- neither have hand-off (we can discuss later)
- neither can have full coverage
about the differences
- companies will use WLAN and not PHS for LAN access. this makes
good advantage for the WLAN market that, if enough hot-spots,
everyone will only invest in and use WLAN instead of PHS, that
the PHS subscription may dive like a stone.
accually, WLAN and PHS competes in the same market segments -
those who use computers extensively in the office and at home.
... and you can say we won't need public WLAN in Japan at all.
- the WLAN access points can reverse-bill the service providers,
kind like roaming (not Zebra ;-) or the business of automatic
vendor machines.
- WLAN is a world, oops, US standard and the chips and equipment
will be cheaper than PHS (several million yen for a 3 channel
basestation?).
- also as a standard, you can have one card to use anywhere and
access any service provider, as opposed to PHS (though it's
a non-brainer to choose H"). same for roaming/abroad use.
- the Japanese regulators make more hassles than yakuza, and
I'd not say it's a demerit if WLAN is not treated as telecom
service, which will make it cheaper and easier to roll-out.
cheers,
Ken
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Received on Mon Jul 8 08:04:45 2002