NTT East told to abide by antimonopoly law over FTTH service

TOKYO, Dec. 4 (Kyodo) — The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) said Thursday it has advised 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 advice following its inspection of NTT East.

According to the FTC’s announcement, NTT East, a regional telephone unit of telecommunications giant Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. lowered monthly access fees for its B Flet’s fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) Internet access service to 4,500 yen per month in April through two reductions from an initial 9,000 yen.

NTT carried out the fee reductions on the grounds that each fiber would be split into two, but in fact there was no such split.

As other common carriers offer optical broadband communications services by borrowing fibers from NTT East for some 5,000 yen per fiber, the fee reduction has made it extremely difficult for them to enter the market.

Given the fact that NTT East did not split fibers, the FTC concluded that the fee reduction was aimed at preventing other companies from starting such services.

NTT East occupies almost 100% of the Eastern Japan market for FTTH Internet access services.

Prior to the latest advice, NTT East was warned by the FTC over its blocking of new entrants to the market twice in the past — December 2000 and a year later.