Chapter 457: Minotaur
NTT was spun off from Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation in 1986, and the company name is still retained and is collectively referred to as Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation.
If NTT is the direct successor of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation, then KDD (Korea Telecommunications and Telephone) is the branch that was split off.
There is a certain connection between the two, as they come from the same department under the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications.
However, there is no doubt that as a direct descendant, NTT has inherited most of the domestic business of Telephone Corporation of Japan, and users of fixed-line telephones are basically all under NTT.
As for KDD (International Telecommunications and Dial), it only took over the international and domestic long-distance business, and was mainly engaged in overseas business.
So after seeing Shirakawa Electric and NUCT jointly launch a mobile phone with GSM signal, NTT was the most anxious.
Local calls, short-distance calls and most fixed-line services are within NTT's main business scope.
Now that NUCT has released its mobile phone ahead of schedule, it is dividing up its future core market.
Therefore, just a few months after the Shirakawa Electric mobile phone was launched, NTT also hurriedly launched its first generation of mobile communication mobile phones.
In fact, NTT has been working on this project for a long time. In the past few years, most of the in-car mobile phones on the market were NTT products.
Therefore, in terms of technological accumulation, NTT has its own strengths.
It's just that because Shirakawa Electric and NUCT moved too quickly, NTT was a little slower.
The TZ-802 mobile phone launched by NTT continued Motorola's early design style.
The same brick-like design makes it hard to hold in one hand. Its weight is as high as 900g, nearly one kilogram.
After all, as the pioneer of the mobile phone industry, Motorola was used as a reference by NTT as a subconscious action based on normal thinking habits.
But Baichuan Feng is different. He has seen various designs of mobile phones in later generations.
When technically possible, the semi-clamshell design is a breeze.
Therefore, in terms of recognition, Shirakawa Electric's one series of mobile phones are unique.
There is no doubt that this design is far superior to the brick machine in terms of aesthetics.
However, thanks to its large user base, NTT's mobile phone was released a few months later.
But it soon caught up with NUCT. Currently, the number of users of the two operators is almost the same, both around 500,000 or 600,000.
And as the infrastructure improves, both are growing rapidly, and this stage may last for a long time.
In terms of communication standards, NTT uses 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, everything is available.
However, Japan has more than just these two telecom operators. Since the privatization of telecommunications in 1985, there have been several newly established operators of a certain scale.
In addition to the aforementioned NTT and KDD, there is also United Telecommunications (NUCT) of Shirakawa Holdings.
There is also Japan Mobile Communications (IDO) jointly established by Toyota, Dainippon Telecommunications (DDI) centered on Kyocera, New Communications Corporation (NCC) which was reformed from a state-owned enterprise, and Japan High Speed Communications (TWJ) which is a road public welfare group under the Ministry of Construction.
As soon as the door to privatization was opened, capable companies set up their own communications groups.
Among the 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 state-owned background, and the other is NUCT, which is a chaebol group with new industry layout.
Now that these two businesses are so prosperous, how could the other companies not have some thoughts in their minds?
Of course there are, but due to the speed of layout, neither IDO, DDI nor TWJ have completed the construction of base stations.
The first-generation communication standards they adopted, that is, the analog signals of the 1G era, are also varied.
For example, IDO uses the same HICAP standard as NTT, but DDI uses the TACS format.
The TACS format is the British communication standard. Both DDI and United Communications (NUCT) have introduced foreign technology.
However, at this time, TACS will be gradually integrated into the GSM format in Britain and will not be further developed.
But as an 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 Japan's several communication operators are different and incompatible with each other.
Today's mobile phones are all contract phones bundled with operators, which means that they are not compatible with each other.
Well, the closed gameplay between daily life has been involutionary from the very beginning.
It is precisely because the signals are incompatible with each other that the remaining communication operators are in trouble.
IDO is easier to deal with as its signal format is the same as NTT's. NTT's TZ-802 mobile phones can be directly sold in the business halls.
Then we quickly launched mobile communications business. Even if the base stations did not cover the entire city, it didn’t matter, at least they had been built in major cities such as Tokyo and Osaka.
But DDI that adopted the TACS standard was in trouble because the only two mobile phones on the market did not support the TACS format.
There was no other way. Since its own customized mobile phone was still under development, in order to enter the market quickly, DDI had to turn to Shirakawa Electric.
Why did they contact Shirakawa Electric? They wanted to ask Shirakawa Electric if it would accept the commission to produce mobile phones in TACS format.
Faced with a customer who came to his door, how could Baichuan Feng refuse?
He would not be as short-sighted as other friendly competitors and deliberately restrict the development of IDO.
Don't forget that DDI's shareholders include Sony .
These three companies either make electronic products themselves or have related businesses under their wing.
Even if Shirakawa Electric does not accept this order, they will be able to produce their own mobile phone within a year and a half at most.
So without much hesitation, Shirakawa Feng agreed to DDI's commission and asked Shirakawa Electric to start producing mobile phones that support TACS.
This batch of mobile phones are compatible with both GSM and TACS formats, and to some extent can be considered as full-network mobile phones.
There is actually no technical difference between contract phones and full network mobile phones. The only difference is that you need to flash the program to activate the corresponding frequency band and they are exactly the same.
So this is not difficult for Shirakawa Electric, it is just a matter of modifying the program.
For Shirakawa Electric, it makes a profit by selling to its own NUCT and it also makes a profit by selling to DDI.
Since they are all about making money, it doesn’t matter who they sell to.
The price to the public is 430,000 yen, of course, the purchase price from DDI is definitely not that much.
The profit of Shirakawa Electric comes from the whole machine. At the same time, Shirakawa Electric can also get a commission from DDI's tariff package.
This is the mainstream cooperation method between contract phones and operators, but because mobile business is an emerging industry, some aspects are still not perfect.
For example, after seeing that DDI adopted Shirakawa Electric's mobile phones, IDO also came to them.
They had the same idea as DDI, which was to ask Shirakawa Electric to help them produce mobile phones that supported the NTT format, which is the HICAP communication standard.
It is understandable that IDO came to 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, how can NTT not have any objections?
This is like being a minotaur in front of others. To be honest, Baichuan Feng was a little hesitant.
After all, doing so might offend NTT, which produces its own mobile phones.
Now that foreign mobile phones support the NTTT format, won’t the market for domestically produced mobile phones be squeezed?
However, after IDO took out the NTT authorization agreement, Shirakawa Kaede no longer hesitated.
After all, IDO is an independent operator, and it has major shareholders such as Toyota Motor and Tokyo Electric Power Company 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 point of view, IDO is free to use mobile phones produced by any manufacturer.
That’s why IDO also came to us, and the reason why IDO chose Shirakawa Electric was very simple.
That is Shirakawa Electric's One series of mobile phones, which are superior to NTT mobile phones of the same period in terms of both technological advancement and aesthetic design.
This mobile phone, endorsed by Akina Nakamori, quickly caused a heated response in society because of its stylish design.
After all, one weighs more than 600 grams and the other weighs nearly one kilogram, so the visual difference is very obvious.
So whatever the public likes, the operators will launch accordingly.
Therefore, both DDI and IDO have coincidentally moved closer to Shirakawa Electric.
After agreeing to IDO to provide NTT format mobile phones, Shirakawa Kaede simply went to talk to NTT's president, Mado Tsune.
He hopes that Shirakawa Electric can produce full-network mobile phones that support three formats: HICAP, GSM, and TACS.
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 Japan's domestic communications industry and a state-owned enterprise with a good pedigree, NTT is very disdainful of the market share of NUCT and DDI.
Well, NTT has the capital to be proud of. In terms of basic foundation, its future prospects are indeed brighter than those of the other companies.
At the same time, internal conservative forces are also at work. They still cling to their background as state-owned capital and more or less look down on other private enterprises that came later.
Since NTT did not agree, Shirakawa Electric had no choice but to produce mobile phones that supported the NTT format alone, and they could only be sold in IDO's exclusive stores.
There is no channel anywhere else to directly sell NTT format mobile phones in 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 phone makes better.
In short, the current mobile communications market is a mess, with incompatible formats and fragmented formats.
The same is true for hardware. There are only two types of mobile phones, but they are divided into three categories.
However, NTT probably did not expect this because Shirakawa Electric's mobile phones were so popular.
Many customers bought the NTT format version of the One series mobile phones from IDO and then inserted the SIM cards they bought from NTT into them.
This way, you can use a Shirakawa Electric phone with an NTT package.
As a middleman, IDO found that it did not sell many communication packages, but it shipped a lot of mobile phones.
Although the current business halls sell contract phones, there is no mandatory requirement to subscribe to a package when buying a phone, or to buy a phone when subscribing to a package.
These are all ways of playing in later generations. Mobile services are just beginning now, so there are many loopholes.
It is precisely because of this reason that there is such a strange phenomenon that people buy a mobile phone from IDO but insert an NTT phone card into it.
Soon after, NTT discovered the anomaly and began to require that IDO package fees be bundled with mobile phones on a one-to-one basis, and NTT itself also began to implement this.
However, IDO dragged its feet and refused to implement it, because if the business hall just sold mobile phones, it would also make a profit, and the profit was quite lucrative.
NTT was furious to see IDO happily acting as a middleman.
So it threatened that if IDO did not comply, it would no longer open NTT's communication standards to IDO.
IDO was stiff and said, "If you don't let me use it, the worst that can happen is that I will embrace GSM and never have anything to do with it again."
NTT was choked by the response from the IDO bachelor and didn't dare to threaten too much.
However, this is short-term quick money after all, and the capital behind IDO is not short-sighted.
Doing so will only benefit Shirakawa Electric and NTT, but IDO's own communications market share will remain elusive.
Therefore, after a round of reforms, contract phones in various business halls began to be bundled one-to-one.
Since then, this phenomenon has been greatly reduced.
However, despite the incident, the popularity of Shirakawa Electric mobile phones can be seen.
Even IDO is discussing abandoning the NTT format and preparing to join forces with DDI to fight against NTT and NUCT.
