Background (Where the PMC Service Stands)

The personal multimedia communication, or PMC, services experiments are being carried out at the Musashino Research and Development Center. These experiments are phase 3 of the VI&P Comprehensive Experiments.

NTT's phase 1 experiments, which were conducted between 1991 and 1993, focused on narrow-band (N-ISDN) services to optimize the use of its existing INS-Net, and a functional evaluation of prototype fiber-optic subscriber transmission systems.

Phase 2 experiments, which were initiated in April 1993, focused on perfecting new services and creating new applications based on optical communications and ATM technology. Many infrastructual network systems which have been evaluated in the phase 2 experiments, were provided for joint utilization tests of multimedia communication and for B-ISDN trial experiments (BBCC and PNES). The phase 2 experiments can be regarded as a services trial based on the visual and intelligent elements of the VI&P concept, and were aimed at business and home use in the future.

The sudden increase in the number of pagers and cellular phones, illustrates the rising demand for person-to-person communication, even for private use. This latest trend in society is the basis for the Person in the VI&P concept, which stands for personal communication. Taking this into consideration, the phase 3 experiments focus on personal-use multimedia service based on wireless access such as the personal handy phone system (PHS) and satellite communication.