Founded in 1997, Taiwan's First International Telecom Corporation seemed to have a bright future ahead. Having launched the PHS (Personal Handy-phone System) throughout the country – a mobile telephony network used mainly in Japan, China and Taiwan – Telecom Corp. had reached one million users in just a few years.
Part of his fortune was due to the ability to attract support from groups with special needs. Doctors and health professionals, for example, opted en masse for First International Telecom both because the PHS system did not interfere with the functioning of medical machinery and because, with a clever marketing campaign, the same system was presented as less harmful to health than those of other telephone service providers.
All this before the smartphone era. Within a few years, sales began to decline and those, like First Telecom Corp., who relied exclusively on voice telephony were completely overwhelmed by operators offering Internet services. The financial holes have been widening, until they become chasms, and in 2008 a restructuring plan was drawn up for which the Japanese experts of the XGP Forum were called. The plan was to move from PHS to eXtended Global Platform (XGP), which improves performance through higher data rates.
After five years of attempts, however, the white flag arrived and the Taipei District Court ruled the bankruptcy of the First International Telecom Corporation. The company said it will try to maintain the network frequency of 1900 MHz - the PHS operates in a frequency band between 1880 and 1930 MHz - so as not to deprive its customers of a service.
According to industry experts, however, it is very unlikely that there are companies interested in taking charge of a company that has become irreparably obsolete in just a few years.
Attachments: China Post
