News of the proposed merger also caused observers to compare and contrast AT&T Co with Japan’s national phone company, Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp: while NTT is cutting out research and development for non-core business activities, such as general semiconductor development, and turning to the open market for its data processing needs and ending contract manufacture of its DIPS mainframes – which have been specified by NTT and manufactured by Fujitsu Ltd, Hitachi Ltd and NEC Corp since the 1960s – and developing its Multi-vendor Integration Architecture in partnership with five firms including Digital Equipment Corp and IBM Corp, AT&T is buying a whole computer company; NTT comments that AT&T is the exception that proves the rule, and that NTT finds itself under pressure from a more competitive market and forbidden by law to operate overseas, which makes it more in the style of most of the common carriers in the rest of the world.
