New wireless services coming

Mobile phone users may soon benefit from a new kind of wireless telecom service called personal handyphone system (PHS) when First International Telecom Corp (大眾電信) launches a new operation in April.

During the initial stage of the project, First International will only offer services between Keelung (基隆) to Taipei. The PHS infrastructure will extend to Hsinchu by the end of next year, the company said.

The company said the trans-mitting speed of PHS can reach to 64Kbps (kilobits per second), much faster than the global system mobile (GSM) communications' 9.6Kbps.

The airtime fee for PHS is 50 percent lower on average than for GSM.

The higher speed and lower fees will be attractive features for cellphone users who wish to access the Internet.

"We have cooperated with some 200 local Web sites for providing a wide range of data content, including messaging, e-mail and graphics," said Kristy Hsu (許凱萍), the company's public relations manager.

First International hopes to obtain 380,000 subscribers by the end of this year, Hsu said.

PHS, a low-tier mobile phone (LTMP) service initially developed in Japan, has become popular among Japan's young people and housewives in the past few years. Japan boasts some 6 million PHS subscribers, accounting for 10 percent of the country's cellphone users.

Another local LTMP operator is Taiwan PCS Network Co (聯邦電信), which is expected to begin operations in May.

PCS said they have built some 500 bases from Keelung to Taoyuan and will complete infrastructure for all of Taiwan by the end of next year.

Although both companies believe that LTMP has strong market potential, Jason Lin (林一平), professor of computer science and information engineering at National Chiao Tung University, said that LTMP's market niche is in providing value-added services.

"LTMP will find it difficult to compete against dominant mainstream cellular phone services," Lin said.

"But value-added services based on larger bandwidth may have a shot at succeeding," he added.