WILLCOM, Japan's 4th largest mobile carrier, files for bankruptcy. They're Japan's sole provider of the personal handyphone system, or PHS, which first drew customers in the 1990s for its relatively low calling fees and better voice quality. Back then they also had better coverage than regular cellphones in the subways due to small and cheap PHS antennas. Not sure how they stack up these days as I've not used a PHS phone for awhile (last I had was a w-zero3[es] Advanced which I used as a secondary phone). I used PHS a lot for data access cards back in the day. Before 3G caught on PHS was the fastest way to get online from anywhere and when it came to latency it was better than UMTS. Last but not least, they were out early with flat rate data plans. Reckon competition got quite tough in that field with HSDPA being so much faster and with the new carrier E-Mobile's aggressive pricing.
Additionally WILLCOM has a long history with us as they were the first carrier - then named DDI Pocket - in Japan to introduced phones loaded with Opera back in 2004. They even had an "Opera-button" on those phones. :)
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