NEC Corp. is marketing a new Personal Handyphone System terminal for Japan and other markets under the Juwacky brand name.
Juwacky is priced at about $400, and NEC said it expects to sell 5,000 units per month. A digital home adapter is available for about $300 so the terminal can be used as a cordless phone.
Three groups of PHS service providers operate in Japan. NEC said it will market the phone through all three as well as through its own retail distribution channels.
The terminal is about 51 cubic inches in size and weighs in at 0.3 pounds. It provides four hours of continuous talk time and 100 hours of waiting time, NEC said.
Users can choose from 10 ring sounds, eight of which are factory installed and two of which can be created by the users themselves. As many as 100 names can be stored and dialed with one-touch buttons.
In related news, NEC said it received orders to provide PHS-based wireless local loop systems to operators in Guatemala and Argentina.
The Guatemalan order consists of 12 cell stations and 768 fixed telephone terminals. NEC said the contract is valued at $2 million, and the system will be in operation this spring.
The order from Telecom Argentina S.A. is valued at about $12 million and includes 45 cell stations and 2,765 terminals for the northern part of that country, NEC said. It also is expected to be operational this spring.
