Word: ntt
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...November 2004, Keiji Tachikawa, the former president of mobile-phone giant NTT DoCoMo, became president of JAXA. His mission: to redefine the agency's goals, win over an unenthusiastic public, and secure more generous funding from a skeptical government. This April, Tachikawa unveiled a new long-term planning statement titled "JAXA Vision 2025" designed to turn the space agency around and establish a manned space program. Over the next 10 years, says Tachikawa, JAXA will study the advisability of lunar exploration and figure out whether Japan should initiate its own manned program. The process won't be quick: he hopes...
Executives at Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), the world's largest telecommunications company, admit they've been watching the merger wave now engulfing U.S. phone companies with a sense of foreboding. Especially unnerving was the announcement earlier this month that 130-year-old AT&T, the American former monopoly carrier that not long ago was the oldest, biggest and baddest telecom firm on the planet, was about to be swallowed up by upstart regional player SBC?providing a sobering reminder that in the information age, no institution is too big to fail if it squanders its competitive edge...
...Transformation" was not, in the past, a word heard frequently at NTT, which as a former monopoly carrier with 60 million customers is the Japanese version of Ma Bell. Like AT&T, NTT now finds itself beset by a variety of nimble competitors offering local and long-distance calling and Internet access at cheaper prices. In its most recent earnings statement, NTT reported a $6.7 billion profit but saw falling revenue in almost all of its businesses. Its stock price has dropped about a third since early last year. Indeed, in Japan, where there are today more mobile-phone numbers...
...Until recently, it hasn't had to. Although ostensibly privatized and deregulated during the 1980s and '90s, NTT's fixed-line business remained virtually unchallenged. With a 99% market share, NTT used monthly fixed-line fees as a multibillion-dollar annuity stream to fund growth enterprises such as DoCoMo, its successful mobile-phone service spun off in 1992 (NTT still owns 64%). But two new entrants in the fixed-line industry have rocked the company's complacency. Last August, Softbank, a leading Japanese broadband provider, announced it would begin offering traditional home-telephone services at a discount. Two weeks later...
...This raid on NTT's war chest could not come at a more critical time. Only about 40% of Japanese households currently have high-speed Internet access, meaning an all-out battle is being fought for the fast-growing market. Leading the charge has been Softbank, which initiated a broadband ADSL service in 2001 under the Yahoo! BB logo at rates that far undercut anything then on the market. In December that same year, it added VOIP (voice over Internet protocol)?telephony delivered over the Internet?at deep discounts to NTT's fixed-line phone fees. And in July...