NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday it will stop accepting new subscriptions for the nation's only nationwide pager service on June 30, marking the end of Japan's full-scale pager service that began more than 35 years ago.
Japan's largest mobile phone operator said the service for current subscribers will continue for the time being, but it plans to eventually terminate the service.
The pager service, which Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corp. launched in 1968, initially targeted corporate users. The public entity was privatized in 1985 and became Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. NTT DoCoMo is a major firm of the NTT group.
After the scope of pager services expanded in Japan, including showing letters as well as telephone numbers on beepers, the number of subscribers ballooned, peaking at 6.49 million in 1996.
But the spread of cell phones led to sharp falls in pager subscriptions. At the end of March, the number of pager subscribers stood at 460,000, about one-14th the peak level.