Rakuten to offer PHS service from April

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Rakuten plans to start offering a PHS (personal handyphone system) service in April by leasing circuits from Willcom. Rakuten’s PHS service will offer voice calls, email communications, and internet access. Partially modified handsets from Willcom are expected to be used initially, but Rakuten is considering offering handsets under its own brand in the future.

Rakuten aims to pitch its PHS service to 25,000 or so businesses which operate online stores at the Rakuten Ichiba virtual mall, as well as to roughly 42 million individual members of the virtual mall.

It plans to roll out the service first to business customers in April and to individuals by the end of the year.

For individual customers, Rakuten intends to issue points based on phone usage that can be used for shopping at the Rakuten Ichiba.