PHS service started in 1995. Initially, NTT Personal, DDI Pocket, and Astel started the service, but the service that remained until the end was the service of Ymobile, which is the lineage of DDI Pocket.
This last public PHS service ended today in 2021.
In 1995, when the PHS service was launched, pagers were the main means of communication. Cell phones that can be used to make calls were quite expensive and were not readily available.
PHS has become popular among students and young working people because the basic charge is cheap and you can make calls. However, the area covered by a single base station was narrow and often out of range.
From around 2001, PHS became popular again, mainly for data communication. Although the speed is not very fast, it enables constant connection, and it has become an indispensable item to be used with mobile devices.
However, the popularity of PHS did not recover dramatically.
WILLCOM, which took over DDI Pocket, has been a hot topic for its drastic plans such as all-you-can-talk and introduction of unique terminals such as W-ZERO3, but difficult times continue. In 2010, he applied for the Corporate Rehabilitation Act and Softbank became the sponsor company. In 2014, it merged with eAccess to form Ymobile.
And in 2018, announced the end of the general PHS service. Initially, it was scheduled to end at the end of July 2020, but considering that the transition process has become difficult due to the influence of the corona disaster, it has been postponed to the end of January 2021, that is, one year ago today. Then the service ended.
In addition, telemetering services using communication modules are still being offered, not for the general public. New subscriptions are not possible, but this is scheduled to be available until the end of March 2023, so there is still a little more than a year left until the complete end of PHS.
Main Events of January 31st
2001, Sega announces discontinuation of "Dreamcast" 2014, Sharp launches Windows 8 tablet "Mebius Pad" 2014, Lenovo launches "ThinkPad 8" 2014, King Jim launches mouse with camera In 2016, Trinity launched Windows 10 Mobile "NuAns NEO" In 2018, OPPO officially announced its entry into the Japanese market In 2019, Nintendo ended the "Wii Shopping Channel" In 2020, Tech One launched “OneGx1 Pro” will be launched in Japan In 2020, Softbank will launch “AQUOS zero2” In 2021, Y!mobile will end its PHS service for general users
Source: Ymobile