page_title: Personal Handy-phone System
section_title: Implementation
hierarchical_section_title: Personal Handy-phone System / Outline / Implementation
caption_attribution_description: アステルPHS基地局 撮影日：2006年 7月10日 撮影地：（神奈川県川崎市中原区小杉陣屋町） 撮影者：cory Base station of Personal Handy-phone System by ASTEL Tokyo, Japan. (This Base station is scrapped.) Date: 2006-07-10 (Jul 10, 2006) Place: Kosugi-Jinya-cho Nakahara Kawasaki Kanagawa, Japan. Author: ISAKA Yoji (cory)
context_page_description: The Personal Handy-phone System, also marketed as the Personal Communication Telephone in Thailand, and the Personal Access System and commercially branded as Xiaolingtong in Mainland China, is a mobile network system operating in the 1880–1930 MHz frequency band, used mainly in Japan, China, Taiwan, and some other Asian countries and regions.
context_section_description: Developed by NTT Laboratory in Japan in 1989 and far simpler to implement and deploy than competing systems like PDC or GSM, the commercial services were started by three PHS operators (NTT-Personal, DDI-Pocket, and ASTEL) in Japan in 1995, forming the PIAF (PHS Internet Access Forum). However, the service was pejoratively dubbed as the "poor man's cellular", due to its limited range and roaming abilities. Market share in Japan has been declining and NTT DoCoMo, which has absorbed NTT Personal, and ASTEL terminated the PHS service in January 2008. Most other countries with PHS networks have also terminated offering PHS services and migrated to GSM.
  In Thailand, TelecomAsia (now True Corporation) integrated the PHS system with Intelligent Network and marketed the service as Personal Communication Telephone (PCT). The integrated system was the world's first that allowed the fixed line telephone subscribers of the public switched telephone network to use PHS as a value added service with the same telephone number and shared the same voice mailbox. The PCT service was commercially launched in November 1999 with the peak of 670,000 subscribers in 2001. However, the number of subscribers had declined to 470,000 in 2005 before the breakeven in 2006 after six years of heavy investment up to 15 billion THB. With the popularity of other cellular phone services, the company shifted the focus of the PCT to a niche market segment of youths ages 10-18.
  Wireless local loop (WLL) systems based on PHS technology are in use in some of the above-mentioned countries. WILLCOM, formerly DDI-Pocket, introduced flat-rate wireless network and flat-rate calling in Japan, which reversed the local fate of PHS up to an extent. In China, there was an explosive expansion of subscribers until around 2005. In Chile, Telefónica del Sur launched a PHS-based telephony service in some cities of the southern part of the country in March 2006. In Brazil, Suporte Tecnologia has a PHS-based telephony service in Betim, state of Minas Gerais, and Transit Telecom announced a rollout of a PHS network in 2007.
  China Telecom operated a PAS system in China, although technically it was not regarded as allowed to provide mobile services, because of some particularities of the Chinese governance. China Netcom, the other fixed-line operator in China, also provides Xiaolingtong service.  The system was a runaway hit, with over 90 million subscribers signed up as of 2007; the largest equipment vendors were UTStarcom and ZTE. However, low priced mobile phones rapidly replaced PHS. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of the People's Republic of China issued notices on 13 February 2009 that both registration of new users and expansion of the network were to be discontinued, with the service to be ended by the end of 2011.
  A PHS global roaming service was available between Japan (WILLCOM), Taiwan, and Thailand.
caption: ASTEL-brand PHS Base station in Tokyo, Japan
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