NTT Communications Corp., a new international and long-distance telecommunications carrier, will try to achieve annual sales of 100 billion yen by fiscal 2001, President Masanobu Suzuki announced Tuesday.

NTT Communications will start services Thursday when Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., the country's dominant carrier, is reorganized into NTT Communications and two regional carriers.

Although NTT Communications will inherit the parent firm's long-distance operations, the company will be a newcomer in international services, since NTT had been banned from providing that service. "We set a target of making 100 billion yen in international sales in three years and breaking even in three years, though achieving such a target will be very difficult to achieve," Suzuki told a press conference.

At the moment, the firm estimates its total sales will hit 1.1 trillion yen at the end of the current fiscal year, which ends in March 2000.

Meanwhile, Suzuki stressed that the company is putting priority on value-added services and the rapidly growing field of data transmission services, since conventional voice-transmission services and technologies are expected to decline in the future.

To provide seamless services, NTT Communications is trying to create networks throughout Asia and plans to extend its reach into the Pacific region and North America, Suzuki said.

For that purpose, the company is looking to form partnerships with other companies, possibly in the form of business and capital tieups, Suzuki said. He also suggested the possibility of the firm delivering local services by setting up its own local networks that are independent of those used by regional carriers in the NTT group.