Reborn Tokyo Golden Age

NTT was split from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation in 1985. It still retains the name of the company and is collectively known as Japan Telegraph and Telephone Corporation.

If NTT is the direct descendant of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, then KDD (International Telecommunications and Telephone) is the branch that was spun off.

There is a certain connection between the two, as they come from the same department under the Ministry of Postal Affairs.

However, there is no doubt that NTT, as a direct descendant, has inherited most of the domestic business of Telecom and Telephone Corporation, and the users of fixed-line phones are basically under NTT.

As for KDD (International Telecommunications and Telephone), it only takes away part of the international and domestic long-distance business, which can be regarded as mainly overseas business.

So after seeing that Shirakawa Electric and NUCT jointly launched a mobile phone with GSM signal, the most urgent thing was NTT.

Local calls, short-distance calls and most fixed-line services are within NTT's main business scope.

Now that NUCT is releasing mobile communication phones in advance, it is carving up its future basic market.

Therefore, just a few months after the launch of Shirakawa Electric's mobile phone, NTT also launched its first-generation mobile communication phone in a hurry.

In fact, NTT has been working on this project for a long time. In the past few years, the car mobile phones on the market were basically NTT products.

Therefore, in terms of technology accumulation, NTT has its own two brushes.

But because Shirakawa Electric and NUCT moved too fast, NTT was slightly slower.

The TZ-802 mobile phone launched by NTT continues Motorola's early design style.

The same brick-like design may not be able to be held by one palm. Its weight is as high as 900g, nearly one kilogram.

After all, as the originator of the mobile phone industry, Motorola being used as a reference by NTT is also a subconscious action under normal thinking habits.

But Bai Chuanfeng is different. He has seen various designs of mobile phones in later generations.

Where technically possible, a semi-clamshell design is a breeze.

Therefore, in terms of recognition, Shirakawa Electric’s One series mobile phones are unique.

There is no doubt that such a design is far beyond the tile machine in terms of aesthetics.

However, relying on its huge user base, NTT's mobile phone was released a few months late.

But soon, it caught up with NUCT. At present, the number of users of the two operators is almost the same, both at around 500,000 to 600,000.

And with the improvement of infrastructure, both are growing rapidly, and this stage may last for a long time.

In terms of communication standards, NTT has adopted its own communication format, FDD-FDMA-FM, also known as the HICAP standard.

This communication standard was developed by NTT itself. As the predecessor of a state-owned institution, its various research institutes are very complete.

From communication standards to the development of mobile phone terminals, we have everything covered.

However, Neon is not limited to these two communications operators. Since the privatization of communications in 1985, there have been several newly established operators with a certain scale.

In addition to the previously mentioned NTT, KDD, and Shirakawa Holdings' United Communications (NUCT).

There are also Nippon Mobile Communications (IDO) jointly established by Toyota, Daidai Denden (DDI) with Kyocera as the center, New Denden Denki (NCC) with the reform of state-owned enterprises, and public welfare groups building roads under the province. Japan High Speed ​​Communications (TWJ) is a legal entity.

As soon as privatization was liberalized, powerful companies were setting up their own communications groups.

Among the current seven mainstream companies, four have state-owned backgrounds and three belong to chaebol groups.

There are two companies that have officially launched mobile communications business, one is NTT with a state-owned background, and the other is NUCT, which is a chaebol group with a new industrial layout.

And now that these two businesses are so prosperous, can the other companies not have some ideas?

Of course there is, but because of the speed of layout, neither IDO, DDI nor TWJ have completed the base station construction yet.

The first-generation communication standards they adopt, that is, the analog signals of the 1G era, are also diverse.

For example, IDO uses the same HICAP standard as NTT, but DDI uses the TACS format.

The TACS format is the British communication standard, and DDI and United Communications (NUCT) both introduce foreign technologies.

However, at this time TACS will be slowly integrated into the GSM format in Britain, and there will be no further in-depth development in the future.

But as analog signal technology in the 1G era, these are sufficient.

If you look at the overall situation, you will find that the communication formats of Neon's several communication operators are different and incompatible with each other.

And today's mobile phones are all contract machines bundled with operators, which means that mobile phones are not compatible with each other.

Well, the closed gameplay between small days has been involved from the very beginning.

It is precisely because of the incompatibility of each other's signals that it has stumped the remaining communication operators.

Fortunately, IDO has the same signal format as NTT, and the TZ-802 mobile phone produced by NTT can be sold directly in the business hall.

Then we will quickly develop mobile communication services. Even if the base stations do not cover all the areas, it does not matter. At least they have been built in major cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.

But DDI using the TACS standard is in trouble, because the only two mobile phones on the market do not support the TACS format.

There is no way to customize mobile phones by itself, which is still under development. In order to enter the market quickly, DDI can only turn to Shirakawa Electric.

Why are you looking for Shirakawa Electric? Just ask Shirakawa Electric if it will accept the commission to produce mobile phones in TACS format.

Faced with the customers who came to his door, how could Bai Chuanfeng not agree?

He would not be as short-sighted as other business partners and deliberately restrict the development of IDO.

Don’t forget that in addition to Kyocera, DDI’s shareholders include Sony and Mitsubishi Corporation.

These three companies either make electronic products themselves, or the groups behind them have related businesses.

Even if Shirakawa Electric does not accept this order, they will be able to produce their own mobile phones within a year and a half at most.

So without much hesitation, Shirakawa Kaede agreed to DDI's commission and asked Shirakawa Electric to start producing mobile phones that support TACS.

This batch of mobile phones is compatible with both GSM and TACS formats. To a certain extent, it can be regarded as a full-network mobile phone.

In fact, there is no technical difference between contract phones and full Netcom phones. The only difference is that they are exactly the same after swiping the program to activate the corresponding frequency band.

So this is not difficult for Shirakawa Electric, it is just a matter of modifying the program.

For Shirakawa Electric, it makes money selling its own NUCT, and it also makes money selling it to DDI.

Since they are all about making money, who should they sell to?

The external price is 430,000 yen. Of course, the purchase price from DDI is definitely not that much.

Shirakawa Electric's profit comes from a part of the whole machine, and at the same time, Shirakawa Electric can also get a part of the commission from DDI's tariff package.

This is the mainstream method of cooperation between contract machines and operators, but because the mobile business is an emerging industry, some aspects are not perfect yet.

For example, after seeing that DDI adopted mobile phones from Shirakawa Electric, IDO also came to visit.

They have the same idea as DDI, that is, they want Shirakawa Electric to help them produce mobile phones that support the NTT format, which is the HICAP communication standard.

It was understandable that IDO came to visit him. After all, he had no choice.

But you, IDO, are working with NTT. If you ask me, Shirakawa Electric, to produce mobile phones that support the HICAP format, does NTT have any objections?

This is a minotaur in person. To be honest, Bai Chuanfeng is a little hesitant.

After all, doing so may offend NTT, which produces mobile phones at home.

Now that foreign mobile phones support the NTTT format, won't the market for mobile phones produced by ourselves be compressed?

But after IDO came up with NTT's licensing agreement, Shirakawa Kaede didn't hesitate anymore.

After all, IDO is an independent operator, and there are major shareholders such as Toyota Motor and Tokyo Electric Power behind it.

What it signed with NTT was only a format adoption agreement, which did not include the requirement to use mobile phones produced by NTT.

So from a legal perspective, IDO is free to use which manufacturer's mobile phone it uses.

That's why IDO came to the door. The reason why IDO chose Shirakawa Electric is very simple.

That is Shirakawa Electric's One series mobile phones, which are superior to NTT mobile phones of the same period in terms of technological advancement and aesthetic appearance.

This mobile phone, endorsed by Akina Nakamori, quickly aroused a warm response in the society because of its fashionable appearance.

After all, one weighs more than 600 grams and the other weighs nearly one kilogram. The visual difference is very obvious.

So whatever the public likes, the operators will take advantage of the trend and launch it.

Therefore, both DDI and IDO have invariably moved closer to Shirakawa Electric.

After agreeing to IDO to provide mobile phones in NTT format, Shirakawa Kaede simply went to talk to NTT's president Hisashi Mando.

He hopes that Shirakawa Electric can produce full-network mobile phones that support HICAP, GSM and TACS formats.

In return, NTT can also produce mobile phones that support other operators' communication standards.

Unfortunately, NTT rejected Shirakawa Kaede’s proposal.

As the big brother of Neon in the domestic communications industry and a well-established state-owned enterprise, NTT disdains the market share of NUCT and DDI.

Well, NTT has the capital to be proud of, and in terms of its fundamentals, its future prospects are indeed broader than those of other companies.

At the same time, internal conservative forces are also at work. They still cling to their background as state-owned capital and look down upon other private enterprises that followed.

Since NTT does not agree, there is no way Shirakawa Electric can only produce mobile phones that support the NTT format alone, and they can only be sold in IDO specialty stores.

There cannot be any channel elsewhere that directly sells NTT format mobile phones on the market.

In addition, Shirakawa Electric can also produce mobile phones that support both GSM and TACS formats.

Because of two-way authorization, IDO can also produce similar mobile phones in the future.

As for how customers choose, it depends on which mobile phone is better.

In short, the current mobile communications market is in a mess, with incompatible formats and a mess.

The same is true for hardware. There are obviously only two types of mobile phones, but they are divided into three categories.

But NTT may not have expected it, because Shirakawa Electric's mobile phones are so popular.

After many customers bought the NTT-formatted One series mobile phone from IDO, they turned around and inserted the phone card issued by NTT.

In this way, you can use Shirakawa Electric's mobile phone with NTT's package.

As a middleman, IDO found that it did not sell many communication packages, but shipped a lot of mobile phones.

Although the current business halls use contract phones, there is no mandatory requirement that you must buy a package to buy a mobile phone, or that you must buy a mobile phone to buy a package.

This is all the gameplay of later generations. Now the mobile business has just begun, so there are many loopholes.

It is precisely for this reason that there is a strange phenomenon of buying a mobile phone from IDO but inserting an NTT calling card.

Soon after, NTT discovered the anomaly and began to require IDO package fees to be bundled one-to-one with mobile phones, and NTT itself began to implement this.

However, IDO was procrastinating and refused to implement it, because the business hall only sells mobile phones, which is also profitable, and it is quite popular.

NTT was very angry when he saw IDO acting like a second-rate dealer.

So it threatened that if IDO did not implement it, it would no longer open the NTT communication standard to IDO.

If you don't let me use IDO, I will fall into the arms of GSM and never have any contact with you.

I was choked by IDO's bachelor's reply. NTT really didn't dare to threaten him too much.

But this is short-term quick money after all, and the capital behind IDO is not short-sighted.

This will only make Shirakawa Electric and NTT cheaper, but IDO's own communications market share has been slow to increase.

Therefore, after the Yitong reform, the contract machines of each business office began to be bundled one-to-one.

Since then, this phenomenon has been greatly reduced.

However, despite the turmoil, the popularity of Shirakawa Electric's mobile phones is evident.

There are even discussions within IDO to abandon the NTT format and prepare to join forces with DDI to fight against NTT and NUCT.