Japan’s cellular telephone and pager operators will boost their capital investment by 62% in the year to end-March 1997, helped by sharp market expansion, the Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications said. According to a ministry survey, Japan’s 90 operators of cellular phones, Personal Handy Phones and pagers plan to invest an aggregate $15,435m this fiscal, up from an estimated $9,500m last. Investments will be mainly used for the construction of new base stations and introduction of digital cellular phone systems. Last fiscal, cellular subscribers more than doubled to 10m, while the new Personal Handy Phone service gained 1.5m subscribers. The 90 operators expect to post $33,349m in combined sales in 1996-97, up from an estimated $22,390m for the year just ended.
