An advisory panel to the telecommunications minister recommended Friday that NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp. set different interconnection fees to promote competition between them.
Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp.'s two regional units currently charge new carriers such as KDDI Corp. an identical 4.5 yen for three minutes to use NTT's phone lines.
The Information and Communications Council estimates that if they introduce different fees, NTT East, which is financially stronger than NTT West, would be able to charge 3.59 yen, while NTT West would have to go up to 4.75 yen.