NTT Communications Corp., a major long-distance and international telecom carrier, announced Thursday it will enter the local-call market on May 1.
The company, a unit of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp., will begin offering local-call services in Tokyo, Osaka and Aichi prefectures at a daytime rate of 8.8 yen for three minutes, the same as those of NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp., NTT's two regional carriers, and KDDI, it said.
The move means that NTT Communications will be competing with the two other NTT group firms ahead of the May launch of a new service called Myline, which will allow users in Japan to connect to their preferred carriers without dialing prefix numbers.