Thought the conference call was excellent. Mr. Bill sounded cool, calm and in control-and like there may be something up his sleeve.
Was a nice contrast to Alex's dumbass statement about "Teligent kicking into overdrive." Don't believe the following news article has been posted.
Tokyo, May 12 (Bloomberg) -- KDD, Japan's largest international phone company, said it will soon start building wireless relay stations to provide local telecommunication services next month in three Japanese cities.
KDD will provide high-volume transmission services for corporations in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, said Yasuhiko Ito, a company director. KDD set up a joint venture in January with WinStar Communications Inc. of the U.S. and Sumitomo Corp. to do so.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., the former domestic phone service monopoly, dominates the market for local phone services throughout Japan. The cost of building a rival network has acted as a barrier to other carriers entering Japan's 1.7 trillion yen ($14 billion) local-service phone market.
Using wireless technology, KDD will provide data transmission services at rates 20 to 30 percent lower than those of NTT, Ito said. The service will be too expensive to rival NTT's charges for traditional phone service, a KDD spokesman said.
The venture, called KDD WinStar Corp., is capitalized at 1 billion yen ($8.96 million) and is owned 55 percent by KDD, 35 percent by WinStar, a New York-based telecommunications company, and 10 percent by Sumitomo Corp., a trading company.
Price competition is escalating in the Japanese telecommunications industry as an increasing number of telecommunications companies, foreign and Japanese, slash rates on domestic long-distance and international calls. But local call rates remain among the highest in the world as little competition has arisen to NTT's dominance.
KDD's shares rose as much as 100 yen to 6,950 in morning trading. NTT's shares fell as much as 40,000 yen to 1.29 million. Sumitomo Corp. shares rose as much as 26 yen to 924. Winstar Communications' shares yesterday gained 6 to 55 1/8.
May/11/1999 22:59
For more stories from Bloomberg News, click here.
|
