Plagued by declining performance in its fixed-line business, Japan Telecom Co. said Wednesday it suffered net losses of 5.19 billion yen in the first half of fiscal 2001.

The figure is a reversal from its 6.91 billion yen net profit in the April-September period last year.

Operating profit fell 65.2 percent to 23.46 billion yen and pretax profit dropped 72 percent to 15.1 billion yen despite a 27.7 percent year-on-year rise in sales to 849.75 billion yen.

Hit by fierce competition for subscribers to the Myline priority connection service, which began in May, Japan Telecom lost 1.18 million fixed-line subscribers to hold 5.4 million as of Sept. 30.

That sharply contrasts with the performance of its mobile business unit, the J-Phone group, whose subscribers grew 21.9 percent to 11.1 million. J-Phone generated 680.8 billion yen in sales for the six months, up 29.2 percent compared with the same period last year.

Japan Telecom President Haruo Murakami predicted Wednesday better performance for next year, noting that 30 billion yen spent on incentives to have customers select the company for Myline services will no longer be necessary.

He also said that Japan Telecom plans to cut one-third of customer service-related expenses and reduce 9 billion yen in network-related costs, which are expected to total 36 billion yen for the full business year,