The phenomenal TV series "Crazy" finally ushered in the finale last week, and the recent discussion around this drama can be said to have swept all the groups in my WeChat, and the description of PHS in the play pulled my memory back to my student days in the late 90s, when I was in school and I also had my own PHS.
At that time, PHS quickly occupied the student groups of major universities because of low hardware costs and communication fees, and many adults were also equipped with a PHS as a backup machine in the main machine of the three major operators, which was also the beginning of the era of "double guns" in the true sense.
So how did this PHS, who turned the Gao family from a fishmonger into an entrepreneur, make Gao Qisheng step by step into the abyss of depravity? Today we will review the history of PHS's development and see how this product that claims to make landlines disappear is gradually becoming lonely.
The timeline in the drama "Crazy" began in 2000, and after graduating from university, Gao Qisheng brought the new mobile phone hardware of PHS back to Jinghai and opened a PHS specialty store with his brother Gao Qiqiang.
Source: "Crazy" video screenshot
There are two main reasons why PHS can sell well: First, the price of mainstream telecom operators at that time was more expensive. I remember that the China Mobile tariff I was using at that time was 0 monthly rent, 0.6 yuan / minute for phone calls, 0.6 yuan / minute for answering calls, and 0.1 yuan per text message. At that time, although the cost of calling and receiving calls was lower than mine, my parents also had to pay a "monthly fee" every month in addition to the actual cost of calling and texting. So at that time, in addition to carrying my own mobile phone with me, I would also bring an IC calling card, if there are telephone booths around, I will still use the IC card to make calls, and the role of the mobile phone is more like a phone book + SMS machine (two-way pager).
The second point is the "division" of China Mobile Telecom, split into China Mobile and China Telecom two major operators, but after the separation of China Telecom did not get a mobile communication license, so can only watch Mobile quickly occupy the 2G network (GSM) market, so Xu Fuxin, then director of the Zhejiang Yuhang Telecommunications Bureau, was dazzled after learning about the PHS (Personal Handy-phone System) digital mobile communication technology developed by Japan's NTT laboratory PHS technology can achieve wireless coverage through small cell base stations, and the terminal equipment can be wirelessly connected to the local fixed telephone network, so that the traditional fixed landline is no longer "fixed", but can be freely moved and used within the wireless network coverage range. This is not only in line with the current situation that China Telecom does not have a mobile communication license, but also allows China Telecom to enter the "mobile phone" field, so after discussion, Yuhang Telecom and UTStarcom joined forces to bring PHS technology back to Zhejiang.
In the play, Gao Qisheng mentioned that Zhejiang was piloting in 2000, according to the data, in 1999 Zhejiang Yuhang opened the first PHS network in China, when the tariff of PHS can be described as "massacre" China Mobile and Unicom two major operators, the first 3 minutes of calls charged a total of 0.2 yuan, more than 3 minutes after the call is 0.1 yuan / minute, free to answer. You can also set the other half of the call more frequently as a "family number", and make a fixed deduction of 5 yuan per month for making calls between family numbers, often unlimited.
This cheap tariff is of course more popular with ordinary people than the expensive and two-way charging of mobile Unicom, and the number of PHS users showed an explosive trend before 2005, reaching a peak of nearly 100 million users. At the operator level, China Netcom exclusively operates PHS services in ten provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, Jilin, Heilongjiang, Henan and Shandong, while China Telecom is the exclusive agent in the remaining regions.
It can be said that around 2003, PHS quickly occupied the pockets of the masses with the trend of "sparks can set fire to the plains". UTStarcom's success from 1999 to 2004 saw profits rise from less than $200 million to $2.7 billion.
I remember that my first PHS was still a pure English system, and it didn't even have the function of sending and receiving text messages, or a number burning machine with one machine, and if you want to change your mobile phone, you must go to Netcom to burn the number on the new terminal again, which is very troublesome, but it does not hinder PHS from quickly occupying major mobile phone stores with low fees.
With the growth of user replacement demand, the later PHS adopts the form of physical PIM card, the shape is similar to the SIM card of traditional operators, users can directly go to the market to buy their favorite PHS products, insert their own PIM card can be used.
Source: From the Internet
But the reason why PHS products have disappeared now is mainly that the PHS base station used by PHS has a fatal flaw, that is, the coverage area is too small.
The base battle transmission power of mainstream GSM and CDMA is 20W, while most PHS base stations of PHS are only 0.01W, and the maximum only supports 0.5W, which makes the distance between PHS's communication base station and equipment only have a good signal in a short time, and more base stations must be built if you want to increase coverage.
In Japan, PHS phones are also known as "poor people's cells", and in some areas of the mainland are called "local calls", as the name suggests, there is almost no way to make calls out of the city, and even in the urban transportation system, as long as the speed exceeds 60 kilometers per hour, PHS can not be used normally. "Holding PHS in hand, standing in the wind and rain, changing left hand for right hand, right hand can't get through." It can be described as the most realistic description of PHS users.
In the play, Gao Qisheng bought hundreds of thousands of PHS equipment at a preferential price in 2006 to prepare for a big job, but what he didn't expect was that in the next 2 years, the development of PHS went downhill.
In order to combat the momentum of PHS, China Mobile and China Unicom also urgently launched "PHS" and "Super PHS" services in some areas, using CDMA 450 technology, later changed to SCDMA 400 technology, the tariff is exactly the same as China Telecom's PHS, at that time the idea of Mobile and Unicom was very simple: "PHS is technically backward, the only advantage is price." As long as we lower the tariff as well, it will die. ”
Indeed, the biggest problem with PHS as a communication tool is signal instability. And PHS and traditional operators of calls and SMS sending has a "cross-network" situation, which makes PHS users to traditional operators to make calls and send messages when the cost is even higher than the communication fee between mobile Unicom after the price reduction, when the network is more stable China Mobile, China Unicom tariffs become the same as PHS, PHS's advantages are gone.
Time to 2008, China Telecom finally obtained its own mobile communication license, began to vigorously develop the CDMA network, the investment in PHS year by year decreased, which also made PHS's call quality in a long time has not improved significantly, coupled with the three major operators' tariffs have been very close to PHS's tariff standards, many users once again from PHS "defected" back to the arms of traditional operators.
Most importantly, because PHS's PHS technology operates in the band from 1880Mhz to 1930Mhz, which conflicts with the 3G TD-SCDMA frequency band that China Mobile was vigorously developing at that time, in 2009 the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology required all PHS to complete the frequency cleaning and decommissioning work by the end of 2011 to ensure that the 3G system in the TD-SCDMA band was not interfered with.
The arrival of 3G networks allows users to obtain more information on their mobile phones, and China ushered in the era of mobile Internet, in this context, PHS's relatively single communication function has become less important. So PHS finally fell lonely because of the advent of the "national team" 3G era. And Gao Qisheng also didn't know how to fill the deficit because hundreds of thousands of PHS were smashed in his hands, and embarked on the road of crime.
But I have to say that it is precisely because of the disruption of PHS, the high mobile phone tariff "pulled down", so that "everyone can afford a mobile phone" has become a reality, but also accelerated the promotion of traditional communication operators to implement one-way charges and further reduction of tariffs, although such products have disappeared in the long river of mobile communication history, but we are still grateful for it.