Personal Handy-phone System
Mobile radio system
The Personal Handy-phone System (PHS), also known as the Personal Communication Telephone (PCT) in Thailand, and the Personal Access System (PAS) and commercially branded as Xiaolingtong (Chinese: 小灵通) in China, was a mobile network system operating in the 1880–1930 MHz frequency band. In Japan, it was introduced as a low-cost wireless service with smaller coverage areas than standard cellular networks. Its affordability made it popular in China, Taiwan, and other parts of Asia, as both the handsets and network infrastructure were relatively inexpensive to maintain.
Developed in the 1990s, PHS used a microcell architecture with low-power base stations covering 100 to 500 metres (330 to 1,640 ft). Unlike conventional cellular networks that relied on large cell sites for extensive coverage, PHS’s design was better suited for dense urban environments and reduced infrastructure costs.
PHS was overtaken in the marketplace by GSM (2G) and UMTS (3G), with the last retail network decommissioned in 2021 and the last commercial network terminated in 2023.
Outline
The name "Xiaolingtong" was adopted from the protagonist of Ye Yonglie's science fiction classic, Little Smarty Travels to the Future (Xiao Lingtong manyou weilai 小灵通漫游未来).
Technology
PHS is essentially a cordless telephone like DECT, with the capability to handover from one cell to another. PHS cells are small, with transmission power of base station a maximum of 500 mW and range typically measures in tens or at most hundreds of metres (some can range up to about 2 kilometres in line-of-sight), contrary to the multi-kilometre ranges of CDMA and GSM. This makes PHS suitable for dense urban areas, but impractical for rural areas, and the small cell size also makes it difficult if not impossible to make calls from rapidly moving vehicles.
PHS uses TDMA/TDD for its radio channel access method, and 32 kbit/s ADPCM for its voice codec.
“Personal Handy-phone System” enters the record as mobile radio system. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Personal, Handy-phone and System can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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