Willcom

WILLCOM Inc. (株式会社ウィルコム, Kabushiki-gaisha Wirukomu) was a Japanese PHS operator, offering flat-rate wireless network data transmission and flat-rate voice calls for its subscribers, until 2014 when it merged with eAccess to form Y!Mobile.

The company was formerly known as DDI Pocket, a subsidiary of KDDI. In 2004, the Carlyle Group acquired a majority stake from KDDI and changed the name of the company in February 2005. In 2010 SoftBank purchased 100% of the company.

Overview

Willcom, Inc. is a telecommunications company operating a PHS network covering almost all of Japan, and has the largest share of the Japanese PHS market. As other PHS operators are withdrawing their services, it is bound to become the only remaining PHS operator.

The number of its subscribers passed four million on May 29, 2006.

Willcom Okinawa Co., Ltd. is a subsidiary for operations in Okinawa.

History

The company was founded as a planning-company in 1994, and started to offer telephony services in 1995 under the brand DDI-Pocket. As an operator, it has mainly base stations of 500mW-radio output, unlike other PHS operators, which had mainly built 20 mW base stations.