Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. formally announced a new three-year business plan that entails 17,000 job cuts, a 400 billion yen capital investment reduction and a shift in focus regarding Internet protocol-based services.

Under the plan, NTT will try to boost its broadband businesses, such as fiber-optic services, while its two regional units -- NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp. -- will expand the scope of their fiber-optic services.

The plan calls on the firm to terminate or consolidate unprofitable businesses, such as public phone operations, and calls on its group firms to cooperate in providing communications services via wireless local area networks.

While suspending investments in fixed-line phone operations, it plans to expand its wireless operations. The firm expects the shift to help it boost group earnings by more than 70 percent over the next three years.

NTT aims to post a group operating profit of 1.5 trillion yen in the 2004 business year, up from an estimated 867 billion yen profit last year.

Group revenues are estimated to grow to 12.6 trillion yen in 2004 from 11.8 trillion yen in 2001, it said.

To achieve these objectives, NTT will slash its group workforce to 199,000 from 216,000 over the three years, while cutting the group's capital spending to 2.2 trillion yen from 2.6 trillion yen, it said.

It aims to cut group interest-bearing debt by 1.3 trillion yen to 6.4 trillion yen.