On Tuesday, July 9, 2002, at 07:55 , Ken Chang wrote:
> networks. I know PHS has a simple and working hand-off now
It always had hand-off. Originally, the hand-off was a bit slow, you
could not move faster than 40 Km/h during cell hand-off. This has been
increased to about 100 Km/h. However, there was always a hand-off, right
from the start. Timing was an issue - not lack.
> do not provide full coverage or hand-off were the design basics
> for CT-2 and PHS to save money and provide simple services to
> the low-end market.
Again, you are putting PHS in one box with CT-2 and that is wrong.
Your statement is true for CT-2 but ***not*** for PHS.
> so that adding hand-off/coverage is the same as concede failure.
There was no such thing as "adding" hand-off - It was always there in
PHS, and it was never added to CT-2.
> PHS was to complement mobile for the poor,
Again, you make statements about perception - but not facts.
> but people found out
Do you know how long it took SwissCom to get their GSM radio planning
accurate ? This was an issue with the terrain, the topography of the
country. It was not a design problem of GSM.
Likewise, PHS was the first time that a pico-cell network was rolled on
a large scale. Nobody had ever done anything like this before.
Optimising a 300m cell radius network back then was a siginificant
challenge and an incredible achievement. Of course this took a few
years, just as it had taken SwissCom ages to optimise their Alpine GSM
network.
Meanwhile however, PHS vendors have learned from this achievement and
optimising pico- and nano-cell networks of a large scale has become a
straightforward task - computer models exist. There is now even self
tuning base station technology available.
What you are talking about are the very ordinary issues that new
technology runs into when it is first deployed. However, this does not
mean that the PHS design and concept has failed. The technology has
matured and the validity of the design and the concept has been proven.
> there is no room even at the low-end.
Incorrect, there is more room for PHS than there is for cellular in a
densely populated area/region/country. The fact that it is more cost
efficient doesn't mean that it is bad.
> (2)
> PHS did have a good time in the first two years, same as CT-2,
Again, it is nonsense to assume that PHS and CT-2 have anything in
common.
> and what are happening in Taiwan and China (history repeats).
Well, your assumption is dead wrong.
Neither, Taiwan nor China PHS operators have the problems which the
Japanese PHS operators have had ... paying more for the transit than
they are allowed to charge.
Therefore, they are doing very well. In fact, in China you have the
situation that no other technology can be deployed cost efficient enough
to provide service to 80% of population. And this won;t change anytime
soon. It is estimated that it will take at least 1 if not 2 generations
(ie. 20-40 years) before a majority of Chinese will be able to afford a
cellular phone. Well, meanwhile they can afford a PHS phone (80% of
them).
> in Japan, PHS subscribers climbed to 7.1 mln in autumn 1997,
> when many people rushed to shops to buy a mobile phone and some
> came out with a PHS.
>
> the numbers have been falling since then to 5.7 mln now,
All due to government strangling of the PHS operators.
> after
> people found out PHS is a fake.
Nonsense.
The cellular companies had to abandon sign-up fees and high tariffs
because of competition from PHS. Drastic reductions then allowed them to
win many of their lost customers back.
Also, for at least 4 if not 5 years, you couldn't offer a variety of
services on PHS because NTT would hold up and the government didn't move
in to establish a fair market. One example is international calls,
another example is incoming calls from long distance companies.
In Japan, the terminating operator had to collect their share of call
charged from the long distance company, not from the transit company
that delivered the calls to their trunks. However, NTT didn't tell the
PHS operators which long distance company the calls where coming in from
and so the PHS operators wouldn't know where to claim their money. The
government did nothing to make NTT play fair.
I could almost write a book on things like that, where the PHS operators
got screwed over and over again by NTT and the Japanese government.
Those issues are the true reasons why PHS has seen a decline and got a
bad reputation.
It has absolutely nothing to do with the PHS technology and concept.
And in the absence of such an environment PHS will do well and continue
to do well even against competition of GSM and CDMA cellular. There is
absolutely no ground for assuming that PHS will run into trouble in
Taiwan or China.
In fact, the more of these issues are removed in Japan (we begin to see
some gradual change now) there is all reason to see PHS eventually
improving again.
> traffics have been dropping
> more, because people use less and less PHS for voice calls.
No wonder, with all the marketing behind it being focused on data alone.
It has nothing to do with PHS technology. If it was the technology on
its own merits, then you would see an increase in voice, because PHS is
the best system for voice there is. There is no other system that
delivers such voice clarity and there is no other system so cost
efficient.
But if governments and monopolies throw bolders at something ...
> (voice constitutes nearly 80% of ARPU for mobile users).
>
> I'd like to stress again that all the good H" or P-in services
> we enjoy are based on this huge failure of PHS,
huge failure of the Japanese government you mean.
> that Japanese
> government and companies as well as consumers paid dearly ...
> a great recycle it is, but I don't think anyone should try to
> copy it by generating rubbish first.
With all due respect, the only rubbish generated here are your comments
You are simply wrong. And you don't even listen.
- PHS is a high quality voice system, cost-efficient and mature
- The only problem with PHS in Japan is the government strangling the
PHS operators
these are the facts, which you chose to ignore, simply because you don't
like PHS.
what can I say ...
rgds
benjamin
Received on Tue Jul 9 15:47:12 2002