NTT East and NTT West, the two regional division of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp , have raised their combined capital spending budget for local fiber access networks to 280 billion yen ($2.57 billion) compared to 240 billion yen in the previous year. The companies hope to end the year with two million fiber access customers, compared to about 705,000 at the end of January 2004.
Priorities for NTT’s research and development activities in 2004, which were detailed in the company’s annual budget, include technologies for configuring economical and diverse access networks, technologies for building networks that can cope flexibly with diverse network services, and next-generation IP network technologies. At the same time, NTT will pursue basic research in the field of operating systems to improve the reliability of telecommunications networks and in the energy consumption by the network. NTT said it research priorities also include the creation of a photonic network capable of ultra high-speed, ultra high-volume terabit and petabit-level communications. This includes ultra high-density wavelength division multiplexing and other new optical communications technologies as well as optical amplification, optical wavelength multiplexers and demultiplexers, optoelectronic fusion devices, and other new optical components technologies. Further targets for NTT research include e-commerce, content sharing, and community collaboration. http://www.ntt.co.jp
