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To: Ramsey Su who wrote (10043)	4/21/1998 9:47:00 AM
From: Valueman	Respond to of 152472

INTERVIEW-DDI to stress PHS, cell phone services By Yuko Inoue TOKYO, April 21 (Reuters) - The incoming president of Japanese telephone company DDI Corp said on Tuesday that his major task was to make its mobile phone operations profitable. ''DDI has consistently focused on the mobile phone business and my task in the next few years is to make our three mobile phone operations -- PHS, CDMAOne and Iridium -- successful in terms of profitability,'' Akira Hioki told Reuters in an interview. Hioki, an executive vice president who will become president in June, said cut-rate mobile phone service PHS (personal handyphone system) did well in March with a net addition of 41,300 subscribers, but was still not stabilised. ''The PHS business will have the biggest impact on our group profitability,'' he said. He said DDI was on course to make its PHS business profitable in the current year started on April 1, after completing a process of weeding out non-paying and inactive customers on its networks. He said net additions in April so far were about 20,000 subscribers. The Japan-developed PHS service, which costs less than full-powered mobile phones but has less range, is designed for those not needing full mobile services. Since the launch of PHS in late 1995, Japan's three operators have obtained seven million subscribers. But the overall subscriber numbers have been falling since last October due to an aggressive price offensive from mobile phone operators. A decision by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp early this year to restructure its PHS arm fanned speculation that NTT intended to abandon the technology, which Japan has had some success in exporting. PHS networks are operating in Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and Hong Kong. Hioki said he expected demand for DDI's next-generation digital mobile phone service, CDMAOne, to be strong if tariffs were set at an appropriate level. Analysts said a too-low tariff could cause DDI to lose out on its established mobile phone and PHS services, squeezing its financial position by delaying recovery of investments in those existing services. DDI will launch the CDMAOne service in the Kansai area on July 14. Its partner, IDO, is scheduled to launch the service in the Tokyo area next spring. Hioki said there was no possibility that DDI parent Kyocera Corp would make another fund injection into DDI to supplement its huge fund requirements for capital investment. DDI said in February it would issue new shares worth 38.4 billion yen and allocate them to Kyocera, and Kyocera would raise its stake in DDI to 25 percent from 21.4 percent. Hioki said he expected DDI's group net profit for the year to March 31, 1998, to be in line with its earlier estimate of nine billion yen.