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Technology Stocks : Qualcomm Moderated Thread - please read rules before posting -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnG who wrote (338)	7/6/2000 6:37:42 PM
From: JohnG	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 197458

Breaking up NTT JohnG totaltele.com Review may break up NTT By Yuko Yoshikawa, Reuters 05 July 2000 Japan appears set to overhaul telecoms giant NTT with a review that might break up the company, a former state monopoly now at the heart of Tokyo's biggest trade dispute with the United States. Shizuka Kamei, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, called on Tuesday for a review of laws governing Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp , adding that NTT must cut its line access charges to international levels as soon as possible. "In order to promote the IT (information technology) revolution, a second reform of NTT is indispensable," Kamei told reporters. The United States and many of NTT's domestic competitors argue the carrier is stifling competition by overcharging for access to the local lines it dominates. Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori has said he wants to settle the fee issue by the time he meets President Bill Clinton on the sidelines of a July 21-23 major-power summit that Mori will host. Washington wants NTT fees cut faster and deeper than Tokyo has proposed. Last-ditch talks on the thorny topic will begin in Tokyo on July 10. Japan's new telecoms minister, Kozo Hirabayashi, said on Tuesday he also would like to settle the dispute before the summit. "We cannot be slow on this issue," he told his first news conference. INFO-TECH DIPLOMACY Mori has vowed to make IT the centrepiece of the Group of Eight summit on the southern island of Okinawa, and made IT a key plank in the economic platform of a cabinet he launched after parliament re-elected him as premier on Tuesday. The financial daily Nihon Keizai Shimbun said on Wednesday the review of the NTT Law, aimed at galvanising Japan's laggard IT sector and bringing down costs, could lead to a split-up of the telecoms behemoth. An advisory panel to the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry will launch the review as early as this month and seek to reach a conclusion within two years, aiming to revise the laws in 2003, the daily said. Just one year ago, the government capped a lengthy debate by splitting NTT into three units: NTT East and NTT West, two near-monopoly regional providers of local phone services, and NTT Communications, a long-distance and international carrier. But critics, including an advisory panel to Japan's Fair Trade Commission, charge that the reorganisation failed to spark sufficient competition in the world's second-largest telecoms market. The ministry's advisory panel will consider whether to break NTT up completely, expanding the scope of businesses that NTT East and West can enter, and introducing fair competition rules governing the two regional units, Nihon Keizai said. NTT President Junichiro Miyazau has said that revising the existing NTT law to give the regional carriers more flexibility would be a prerequisite for lowering the interconnection fees as demanded by Washington. © 1999 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Related News Stories Two quit Dutch 3G auction at last minute DoCoMo, KPN and Hutchison set to unveil venture Japan set to relent in U.S. telecoms dispute Purara Network to subsume Microsoft's Japan ISP unit DoCoMo silent over stake in Hutchison's U.K. unit Partners key to Hutchison's European dreams Europe alliance makes sense for DoCoMo, say analysts Japanese firms look to diversify KPN and DoCoMo in U.K. 3G talks with Hutchison Related Features