Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp’s three new competitors in the domestic telecommunications market in Japan now have a combined total of over 10m subscriber lines, it was announced last week: Kyocera Corp-backed Daini-Denden Co has a total of 3.95m lines installed with customers; Telecom Japan, associated with Japan Railways, has 3.8m, while the Toyota and Japan Expressways Authority affiliate has 2.3m subscriber lines; the jump to 10m lines was achieved in just three months – there were only 9m at the end of March; the alternative domestic carriers cover most of Japan, and this will become total by 1992; the new common carriers are still cheaper than NTT on most routes, although NTT has also lowered its prices and many telephones in Japan provide an optional function that can be invoked to calculate and automatically select the cheapest route for each call made.
