The boom fell for Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp yesterday when Japan’s Telecommunications Council formally recommended that the uninspiring giant be broken up. The majority state-owned phone company, which has proved a cash-sapping investment for all the widows and orphans that rushed to buy into it, rushed out a set of promises in a last-ditch effort to counter the proposal, pledging a further cut in rates, improved services and development of global multimedia services – all seen as too little, too late. President Masashi Kojima said the company aims to redress gaps in communications rates between Japan and other countries but only by early 2000. The Council called for the company to be split into three – one long distance, two local – companies covering eastern and western Japan at the beginning of the 1998-99 fiscal year in April 1998. The monopoly on regional networks on which all other carriers depend should be eliminated to enhance competition and lower costs. The long-distance operator should be immediately privatized and allowed to offer services such as cable television, cellular phones and international calls; it would inherit stakes in NTT Data Communications System Corp, NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc and NTT Personal Communications Network companies. The regionals would be barred from cable television, domestic long-distance and international. The Japanese government is now studying the recommendation and will make a decision at the end of March.
