(Nikkei BP Group)
(No.1 High Tech News Site in Japanese)
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| NTT to Offer Leased Lines at Less Than Half Standard Rates
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July 28, 1998 (TOKYO) -- Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) said
that from Aug. 3 it will offer a new leased-line service called Digital
Reach for customers needing inexpensive medium- and long-distance connections.
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The monthly charges will be around half of the rates for NTT's standard
high-speed digital leased-line service.
NTT's new service will be available at speeds of 64kbps, 128kbps and
1.5Mbps. The company's existing low-cost leased-line service, called
Digital Access, is available only for short-distance connections of
up to 30km.
The Digital Reach service will use Digital Access for the access line
that connects the customer to a relay line, according to NTT.
Digital Reach will have several grades of service with different levels
of line reliability. The Economy Class service provides a backup line
in case of a line failure, while the Simple Class service option has
no such provision.
The grade of service also depends on which maintenance option the customer
selects. In the "Type 1" option, repairs of failed lines are restricted
to weekdays 9 am to 5 pm, while the "Type 2" service features 24-hour
support.
The less-expensive grade is a combination of the lower-reliability Simple
Class with the "Type 1" maintenance option. The monthly charge for this
grade of service at 64kbps will be about a third that of NTT's existing
64kbps high-speed digital leased-line service.
Digital Reach will be available for distances of over 30km across prefectural
boundaries. It cannot be used for connections within the same prefecture,
even if the distance exceeds 30km. This provision is being made in anticipation
of NTT's split into three companies in the summer of 1999.
Digital Reach has been restricted to inter-prefectural telecommunications
services because this will be the basic service category of the long-distance
NTT company following the 1999 break-up.
Digital Access is very popular because of its suitability for inter-LAN
connections within an enterprise and for line facilities used by Internet
service providers. Digital Reach may see a similar surge in users if
it is favored both as a new leased-line service and as a replacement
for the existing high-speed digital leased-line service.
(Nikkei Communications)
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