KDDI to Stop Accepting Subscribers for PDC System, Promote CdmaOne
March 7, 2002 (TOKYO) -- KDDI Corp. and Okinawa Cellular Telephone Co. (au group) announced on Feb. 28 that they will no longer accept new subscribers for the personal digital cellular (PDC) system-based cell phone service after March 31.
By doing so, the companies intend to promote users to their main cdmaOne service.
The PDC system is a digital cell phone system standardized in Japan, and currently all the cell phone service providers in Japan offer the service based on the PDC system.
The au group started its PDC cell phone service in April 1994. But the group introduced the cdmaOne system in July 1998 for its main service, so the expansion of the PDC service has been virtually halted.
The au group has approximately 11,968,100 subscribers enrolled for its cell phone service at the end of January 2002. The cdmaOne system covers 87 percent of the subscribers counting 10,381,600. On the other hand, the PDC users are only 1,586,500, and about 80,000 through 130,000 users are decreasing each month.
KDDI has not clearly announced the date for the termination of the PDC service. "We will set some duration period, and when the number of users becomes really small then we will again announce the service termination period." This reminds us of the "TACS"; the company stopped this analogue cell phone service a year and two months after terminating to accept new subscribers. Looking back on this case, it is expected that the PDC service will probably end in the spring of 2003.
KDDI will send the information to the current PDC service subscribers regarding the service termination with the mail of service fee breakdown. KDDI also said that it is now considering offering discounts on the cdmaOne terminals to customers who convert to the cdmaOne service.
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