NTT: No change needed for DoCoMo

Japan's Nippon Telegraph and Telephone said on Wednesday that mobile carriers should retain the right to set fees for calls from land lines to mobile phones, defying other fixed-line carriers' complaints that the fees were too steep. NTT, Japan's dominant telecommunications carrier and the parent of No.1 mobile operator NTT DoCoMo, reasoned that DoCoMo operates the systems that puts through the calls, and therefore had the right to set the rates. The issue surfaced earlier this month when a Japanese unit of Britain's Cable & Wireless said it had filed a petition with the Telecommunications Ministry to gain the right to set fees for calls from fixed lines to mobile units.

Many callers currently use mobile phones to make calls to other mobile phones since that costs less than using a land line. Cable & Wireless IDC, a fixed-line telecommunications operator, said it had asked the ministry to order NTT DoCoMo to modify its contracts through which it sets phone charges for such calls. --Reuters

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