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is a Japanese
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 PHS
Personal Handy-phone System

The Personal Handy-phone System , also marketed as the Personal Access System and commercially branded as Xiaolingtong in 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....
 operator, offering flat-rate wireless network
Wireless network

Wireless network refers to any type of computer network that is wireless, and is commonly associated with a telecommunications network whose interconnections between Node is implemented without the use of wires....
 data transmission and flat-rate voice calls for its subscribers.

The company was formerly known as DDI Pocket, a subsidiary of KDDI. In 2004, the Carlyle Group
Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is a global private equity investment firm, based in Washington, D.C., with more than $91.5 billion of equity capital under management....
 acquired a majority stake from KDDI and changed the name of the company in February 2005.

COM, Inc. is a telecommunications company operating a PHS network covering almost all over Japan, and has the largest share of Japanese PHS market.






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is a Japanese
Japan

Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
 PHS
Personal Handy-phone System

The Personal Handy-phone System , also marketed as the Personal Access System and commercially branded as Xiaolingtong in 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....
 operator, offering flat-rate wireless network
Wireless network

Wireless network refers to any type of computer network that is wireless, and is commonly associated with a telecommunications network whose interconnections between Node is implemented without the use of wires....
 data transmission and flat-rate voice calls for its subscribers.

The company was formerly known as DDI Pocket, a subsidiary of KDDI. In 2004, the Carlyle Group
Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is a global private equity investment firm, based in Washington, D.C., with more than $91.5 billion of equity capital under management....
 acquired a majority stake from KDDI and changed the name of the company in February 2005.

Overview

WILLCOM, Inc. is a telecommunications company operating a PHS network covering almost all over Japan, and has the largest share of Japanese PHS market. As other PHS operators are withdrawing their services, it is bound to become the only remaining PHS operator.

It crossed the 4 million subscribers mark on May 29, 2006.

WILLCOM Okinawa Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary for operations in Okinawa.

History


The company was founded as a planning-company in 1994, and started to offer telephony services in 1995 (DDI-Pocket). As an operator, it has mainly base stations of 500mW
Electric power

Electric power is defined as the rate at which electrical energy is transferred by an electric circuit. The SI unit of power is the watt .When electric current flows in a circuit, it can transfer energy to do mechanical work or work ....
-radio output, unlike other PHS operators, which had mainly built 20mW base stations.

The high output level caused some radio interference and it was difficult to place calls in dense areas such as Shinjuku, Tokyo at the early times of the activity, although these problems were solved afterwards. On the other hand, high output (and sensitivity) can also earn wider coverage of area per base station, therefore the operator was able to expand its coverage faster. A tough competition emerged against the cellular telephony companies, and until October 1996, it was not possible to make call between PHS and cellular telephones. Afterwards, charges between the two different systems remained high.

PHS was first popular because of its lower cost, but cellular telephone companies also reduced the charge, which was too expensive from the beginning. Furthermore, the coverage of the cellular companies quickly expanded to comparable levels The competitive advantage of PHS reduced, and DDI Pocket went through difficult years at the end of the 90s and beginning of 2000s, before the launch of its flat-rate service and its buyout by Carlyle.

Stock holders

As of January 1, 2005
  • Carlyle Group
    Carlyle Group

    The Carlyle Group is a global private equity investment firm, based in Washington, D.C., with more than $91.5 billion of equity capital under management....
     60%
  • Kyocera
    Kyocera

    is a Japanese company based in Kyoto, Kyoto, Japan. The company was founded as in 1959 by Kazuo Inamori. It manufactures ceramics and printing-related devices, as well as a comprehensive line of imaging products....
     30%
  • KDDI
    KDDI

    is a Japanese telecommunications operator formed in October 2000 through the merger of DDI Corp., KDD Corp., and IDO Corp.KDDI provides mobile cellular services using both the "au " brand....
     10%


See also

  • PHS
    Personal Handy-phone System

    The Personal Handy-phone System , also marketed as the Personal Access System and commercially branded as Xiaolingtong in 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....
  • AIR-EDGE
  • W-SIM
    W-SIM

    W-SIM is a Subscriber Identity Module card developed by Willcom which, in addition to standard SIM functions, also has the core components of a cellular telephone , such as the radio receiver/transmitter, built inside....


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