Japan’s Ministry of Posts & Telecommunications has come out with statistics on subscriptions to cellular phones, Personal Handy-phones and radio pagers. As of the end of February, subscriptions to cellular phones reached 9.3m, a year-on-year increa se of 135%. Cellular phones are becoming as ubiquitous among businessmen and trendy housewives as pagers are among high-school girls, and the unwritten prohibition about making or taking a call in public is fading as people use their phones in the t rain or in restaurants. There are 10.66m pagers in use in Japan, but the rate of growth was only 14.6% year-to-year. Subscriptions to Personal Handyphone System, a cheaper but limited form of mobile phone, increased to 1.02m from 713,000 in February alone.
