In case of the meter reading of the electricity, gas, water supply etc., generally meter reader will visit houses one by one to read a meter. By sending the data on used wattage or volume to the control center regularly with the PHS unit connected to each meter or control box, meter reading can be automated to save the labor cost as well as to prevent human errors. The PHS requires no cabling work unlike the fixed lines and is easy to install.
    Especially, these meters are generally placed outdoors so the PHS could be quite helpful because it requires no cabling.

2) Telemetering of the vending machine

    A built-in type PHS unit is to be installed into the vending machine to enable the control center to collect information about each vending machine's state of sales, change, stock etc. regularly. Generally, a router is required to go the rounds of assigned area to check each vending machine and supply the shortage of goods in stock.
    The state of each vending machine can be caught in real time by introducing the telemetering service. With this, the loss of sales chance from the shortage of stock or change can be prevented by enabling a router to know what and how many goods and coins are necessary to supply prior to make his rounds. Further, it also leads to a proper inventory by knowing the good seller with the latest sales data. Vending machines are placed on the roadside, in the station yard, indoors etc. so that there may be a difficulty of cabling or problem related to various rights and in such cases it would be quite effective to utilize the PHS wireless link.

3) Maintenance service of an elevator

    As for the maintenance service of an elevator, a full-time surveillance system by sending the data on the state of its operation and machines to the control center has already been constructed. Further, an emergency intercom equipped inside the elevator would also be necessary other than the above surveillance system. Some Japanese elevator maintenance service company used the fixed lines before, however, the total communication cost was very high because there are many elevators to maintain throughout Japan. Then this company decided to introduce the telemetering service provided by DDI POCKET, Inc. (now WILLCOM, Inc.) which costs only several hundred yens per month per one elevator and as a result, drastic cost reduction has been achieved.

4) Examples of applications to the specific businesses

    There is a case of the sales staffs of the companies which have shops in the department stores or station buildings are using the PHS terminal for their ordering goods and/or inventory control work. Under the circumstances of sharing shop space with competitors, generally there are no fixed telephone lines in the shop space but in the backyard. Therefore, each shop's sales staffs are forced to leave there for sending the ordering and/or inventory data to the head office. Such inconvenience can be solved by using the telemetering service. Further, some company may use a handy terminal for payment by credit card. Payment by credit card will become available at the table of restaurant and also at the temporary shops in the events as well.

5) Examples of applications to time recorder management system

    Careervision Inc. (Careervision) is the Japanese company handling the business applications development, ASP (Application Service Provider) service provision etc. Careervision is providing its customers with exclusive time recorder with its management system based on the PHS data communications as one of such business applications.
    Fig.1 shows the system configuration and it's also adaptable to the wireless LAN and cable LAN network as well other than the PHS network.

Click to enlarge the image