NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE EAST CORPORATION:NewsRelease

November 14, 2000

About Government Approval of Our Connection Charges
for DSL Service

On October 18 this year, NTT East and NTT West applied for government approval of an additional connection format for unbundled (See Endnote 1.) DSL service and the technical requirements for its provision. Today, we submitted applications with the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications to gain formal approval of our connection fee schedule for the new DSL service.

Approval of this proposed rate schedule will effectively allow other DSL providers to offer full-scale service on a nationwide scale.

1.Service features and connection charges

Connection charges for each service feature are listed below.

1.Service features and connection charges

Note
Subscribers must pay fees for DSL service in addition to base fees for telephone service.

2.Our views concerning the determination of connection charges

As of December 10, 2000, we had only around 3,000 subscribers signed up (through NTT East and West combined) for the DSL trial service. Also, given the novelty of this new service and the relative lack of familiarity with the work routines involved, we anticipate that some of our engineers may currently require extra time to fulfill their installation and maintenance tasks. For these reasons, rather than relying on our actual costs for the provision of service during the trial period, we decided to standardize our proposed connection fee schedule on the connection expenditures that accrued during FY 1999, when outlays for DSL-related work were relatively stable.

3. Scope of service covered by connection fee

4.Date for introduction of new fee schedule

After our proposed connection fee schedule is approved by the Minister of Posts and Telecommunications, we will move quickly to rewrite our connection service contracts and negotiate new arrangements with other service providers.
NTT East and NTT West have already scheduled this December for the launch of a new Flets ADSL service (tentative name) for connections through regional IP networks.

Endnotes
1.	Unbundling: The segmentation of different communications features.

Splitters: Devices used to split phone (low-frequency) and data (high-frequency) transmissions sharing the same line. Anticipating that the market for subscriber-site splitters will be opened up in the future, NTT East and NTT West have decided to furnish splitters for a separate user fee rather than integrating splitter costs into the connection fee schedule.

3.	DSL modem, DSLAM: Devices utilized for DSL-based communications.