by James E. Carroll
The NTT Group ranks among the top carriers worldwide by nearly any metric, whether by revenue, subscribers, traffic, corporate debt, overseas investments or industry influence. We know the acronym stands for Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation, the incumbent telecom provider of Japan that still owns most of the last mile infrastructure of the company and is a leading innovator in optical and mobile networking technologies. Recently, however, company executives, spelled out the acronym as follows:
Next value partner for
Transformation of business models and lifestyle by
Trusted Solutions of global, secure, end-to-end and full-line ICT services.
There are many key words in this new rendition of the company name but chief among them is “partner”. In its corporate strategy presentation, NTT executives now routinely emphasize the company’s willingness and ambition to seek partners both in Japan and abroad for the many opportunities it sees with artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, telematics, IoT, entertainment, and even the management of modern sport stadiums.
NTT is certainly a big group. As of March 2017, it had 944 subsidiary companies and 274,850 employees.
Some current metrics on NTT and its User Base
In financial terms, the last quarterly report confirms that NTT continues to grow modestly. For Q2, operating revenues amounted to 2.809 billion yen, an increase of 93 billion yen over the same period in 2016, representing growth of 3.4% year over year. Net income amounted to 271.5 billion yen, up 11.4% year over year.
NTT Group’s highest growth rate occurred in its overseas operations. Overseas sales amounted to US$4.6 billion in Q2, up 21.2% year over year. Overseas operating income amounted to $0.19 billion, up 43% year over year.
Home market
Mobile Subscriptions: 75.11 million mobile subscriptions (net increase of 0.23 million) (Included in the above) Kake-hodai & Pake-aeru: 38.34 million subscriptions (net increase of 1.28 million)
FTTH Subscriptions: 20.29 million subscribers (net increase of 0.24 million) (Included in the above) Hikari Collaboration: 9.57 million (net increase of 0.83 million) Ø Growing number of Wi-Fi area owners*1: 612 (net increase of 55)
