Japan Agency Tells Telecommunications Firm NTT East to Honor Antimonopoly Law
Posted on: Thursday, 4 December 2003, 06:00 CST
Dec. 4--TOKYO--The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Thursday it has ordered NTT East Corp. to stop blocking new common carriers' entry into optical broadband communications services for single-family homes in violation of the Antimonopoly Law.
The fair trade watchdog said it gave the order following its inspection of NTT East in July.
According to the FTC's announcement, NTT East, a regional telephone unit of telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT), started optical Internet access services in August 2001. Monthly access fees for the "Basic Type" program of the mainline B Flet's fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) service were set at 9,000 yen.
NTT East subsequently launched a separate program under the name of "New Family Type" and lowered the fees for it to 4,500 yen in April on the grounds that each fiber would be split into 32.
But as there was no such split, the FTC concluded the fee cut was aimed at preventing an expansion of services launched by Tokyo Electric Power Co. in February 2002.
The fee reduction by NTT East has made it extremely difficult for other carriers to offer FTTH services because they borrow fibers from the company for about 5,000 yen per fiber.
NTT East occupies most of the eastern Japan market for FTTH Internet access services.
Prior to the latest advice, NTT East has been warned by the FTC over its blocking of new entrants to the market twice in the past -- December 2000 and a year later.
In addition to the latest order, the FTC warned that NTT East may have violated the Antimonopoly Law as it had subcontractors lure users of asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL) services away from other providers when they carry out work to get the service started.
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