The Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) organized a two-day PHS seminar in New Delhi on February 1 and 2, to promote the introduction of the Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) in India. The following report presents an outline of the seminar in which this writer participated as a lecturer.

1. Schedule of PHS seminar

• Wed., January 31: 11:00-12:30 Press conference
• Thurs., February 1: 11:00-17:00 Seminar for Department of Telecommunications (DOT)
• Fri., February 2: 9:30-16:00 Seminar for new common carriers (NCCs) and other companies

2. Telecommunications in India today

The trend toward liberalization of telecommunications is also having a definite impact on India also. The Indian government has adopted a policy of allowing the entry of private capital into the cellular telephone and basic telephone service sectors in each region, with the aim of promoting synergism through introduction of the principle of competition.
As an advance move in that direction, private capital has been allowed to enter the cellular telephone service market in four major cities (Delhi, Bombay, Calcutta and Madras) four years ago. NCCs have begun providing cellular telephone service via a GSM system in each major city in the latter half of 1995.
As for full-fledged liberalization of telecommunications, the NCCs that will enter the cellular telephone service for other areas were determined at the end of last year. But the tender for the basic telephone service sector is in confusion just now, and the Supreme Court is now investigating this situation.

3. Seminar for DOT (DOT Headquarters)

There were about 80 DOT officials attending. There was particularly strong interest in applying PHS to wireless local loop (WLL) in the access network. Symbolic of that interest was the fact that a presentation on a PHS-WLL system came first, as desired by Mr. R. K. Takkar, Secretary, Ministry of Communications and Chairman of Telecom Commission.
In the Q&A session after each presentation, there was one question after another about the WLL application of PHS. There appeared to be strong interest in the network technology, including the method of connecting PHS to the existing telephone network and the number of subscribers it could accommodate. There was also much interest in the TDMA/TDD access method of PHS. The eagerness with which questions were asked even during the demonstrations conducted over lunchtime left a lasting impression.
Among the demonstrations and exhibits, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. conducted a live demonstration using a wireless PBX and Matsushita Communication Industrial Co., Ltd. presented a live demonstration of PHS fixed terminals. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. had an exhibit of PHS terminals while NEC Corp. and Fujitsu Ltd. presented exhibits using panel explanations and catalogs. As might be expected, the live demonstrations were the most popular, as many people enjoyed actually using PHS terminals to conduct a conversation. They all appeared to be surprised at the high speech quality provided through PHS.

4. Seminar for NCCs (Hilton Hotel)

On the day of the seminar a rather dense fog was generated, which caused serious traffic congestion. Nevertheless, the meeting room was filled with 70 attendees, which is another indication of the strong interest in PHS. Everyone listened intently to the presentations and eagerly took notes. Such enthusiasm was very encouraging to the lecturers.
It was impressive that the few questions which were asked focused on the application of PHS to WLL.
The same demonstrations were conducted as at the DOT seminar, with the addition of an exhibit by Fujitsu of a 100-mW cell station (CS). Since the meeting room was quite large, the attendees with working PHS terminals spread out from one end of the room to the other to enjoy conversing with one another. People from the NCCs were strongly impressed with the potential of PHS.

5. Summary