Faced with mounting criticism over stalling and exclusionary tactics, telecom giant NTT East Corp. for the first time has allowed a competitor to set up broad-band interconnection equipment within its compound in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward.
Faced with mounting criticism over stalling and exclusionary tactics, telecom giant NTT East Corp. for the first time has allowed a competitor to set up broad-band interconnection equipment within its compound in Tokyo's Shibuya Ward.
At the construction site, which was opened to the press on Tuesday, subcontract workers with Tokyo Metallic Communications Corp. were installing equipment for Digital Subscriber Line, which offers much faster data transmission than the technology NTT is able to offer its customers.
On Aug. 21, Tokyo Metallic began installing its DSL facilities in NTT's buildings in Ginza, Ueno, Asakusa, Hamacho and Higashi-Shibuya districts of Tokyo. The firm said it plans to make a total of 25,000 lines DSL-compatible by Thursday.
So far, NTT East -- a core member of the nation's dominant telecom firm NTT Corp. -- itself has been selecting subcontractors through open bidding, a process that has proven to be time consuming.
But by eliminating the bidding process, Tokyo Metallic now can complete all work related to the installation with its own subcontractors in a much expeditious manner, officials of the company said.
Tokyo Metallic, which currently has only 30,000 lines, plans to further increase its DSL lines to 500,000 by the end of March. The red tape and long waiting periods have long been criticized as a symbol of NTT's existing monopoly on local copper lines.