US Senate Presses Japan for immediate 41% reduction in fees NTT charges carriers to access local lines. Japan offers 22.5% cut spread over 4 years.
IMHO, as long as government owned telecom monopoly companies like NTT and Deutsche Telecom rake rake in huge domestic profits due to high prices and spend them to acquire major portions of telecom companies around the world, there is no level playing field and both telecom deregulation and WTO are becomming a farce that will damage other countries includinng the US.
totaltele.com
Senate puts pressure on NTT
rates
By Reuters staff
07 July 2000
U.S. Senate leaders have stepped up pressure on Japan to settle a
bitter telecommunications dispute, warning that the feud could
overshadow this month's summit of Group of Eight (G8) nations.
In what has become the thorniest trade issue between the world's two
biggest economies, Washington has demanded that telecoms giant
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) immediately slash the fees
charged to other carriers for access to its local phone lines. Japan has
offered more modest cuts over a longer time period.
"We seek progress in Japan's commitment to reduce substantially
interconnection rates," Senate Finance Committee Chairman William
Roth, a Delaware Republican, and the panel's ranking Democrat,
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York, said in a letter released on
Thursday.
The senators said settlement of the dispute was "critical to ensure a
successful Okinawa G8 economic summit," according to the letter,
sent to Japanese Ambassador to the United States Shunji Yanai.
Talks on the NTT dispute are set to begin on July 10, and both sides
have said they would like to resolve it before Japanese Prime Minister
Yoshiro Mori meets U.S. President Bill Clinton on the sidelines of the
July 21-23 G8 summit.
Washington has demanded a 41 percent cut immediately in the fees
NTT charges rivals for access to local lines. Tokyo has offered a 22.5
percent cut over four years.
The Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper said the two sides were likely to
agree that NTT cut the rates by around 28 percent by the end of 2002
and to agree to discuss further cuts "in light of NTT's business
performance".
An official at the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry denied the
report.
U.S. trade officials had no comment, saying all proposals would be
discussed in detail starting July 10. If progress is made, U.S. Trade
Representative Charlene Barshefsky is likely to travel to Japan to join
the negotiations.
NTT, 53 percent owned by the government, has argued that cutting the
rates as deeply and as fast as Washington wanted would squeeze
profits and threaten jobs at the telecoms giant.
Failure to settle the spat could be embarrassing for Mori, who wants to
make Information Technology the centrepiece of the G8 summit. The
United States has threatened to file a complaint with the World Trade
Organisation by the end of July if Tokyo refuses to cut the fees.
The Group of Eight unites Russia, Britain, France, Germany, Italy and
Canada as well as Japan and the United States. |
