The telecom ministry decided Friday to ask the two regional carriers of NTT Corp. to revise parts of their plan for the L-mode Internet access service for fixed-line phones to resolve legal problems, ministry officials said.
NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp. hope to launch the service in April, but the decision by the Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry may force them to delay L-mode until May at the earliest.
The two carriers submitted their plan to the ministry Thursday, under which they will use other carriers for inter-prefecture communications, and allow them to set inter-prefecture and Internet access charges, so that the two will not violate the NTT Law.
The two NTT firms are legally required to provide only city calls and long-distance calls within prefectures. NTT Communications Corp. is responsible for long-distance calls between prefectures.
On Friday, the ministry asked the Telecommunications Council, a government advisory panel, to discuss the plan's approval, indicating that the two carriers may violate the law by collecting charges for inter-prefecture access services by proxy.
The ministry also noted that the candidate carriers for the service's inter-prefecture communications are limited to only two firms, both of which have capital relations with NTT and therefore pose a potential threat to fair competition.
Yusai Okuyama, president of rival KDDI, on Thursday called the plan "an evasion of the law."
Given these circumstances, the panel is likely to discuss whether L-mode type services should be called regional communications services and urge the two firms to reconsider their plan after showing them concrete conditions for approval, ministry sources said.
The council will finalize their discussions by mid-March after consultations with the two NTT firms and KDDI, the sources said.