Only two weeks after Telecom Japan, the privatised Japan Railways affiliate communications company, set up its telephones in major Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya railway stations, it is claiming a profitable start with the average daily income from the phones being over $22 each: this compares very favourably with the average daily receipts from Nippon Telegraph & Telephone payphones of just $4.50; of the 60 phones installed, the 40 at Tokyo Station accounted for 85% of the receipts; since the area code has to be dialled before all calls, even in the city, there has been a number of invalid calls, but in those cases a warning message is heard and the coin returned – and in addition, true to the Japanese service tradition, a message warns that when calling within the city, the cost is slightly more than for an NTT call.
