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Asia Pulse
February 22, 2007 Thursday 2:24 PM EST
From Lexis Nexis

The two regional units of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (TSE:9432) estimate that subscribers to their fiber-optic Internet service will top 10 million by the summer of 2008.

Fiber is rapidly becoming the broadband standard in Japan, having already surpassed longtime leader ADSL this January in the number of lines.

NTT East Corp. and NTT West Corp.’s B Flet’s fiber-optic service had 5.36 million lines as of the end of December 2006 and is expected to reach 6.11 million by the end of March.

In January, there were 5.48 million households with ADSL connections, which use conventional telephone lines to connect to the Net at high speed.

Under fiscal 2007 business plans to be announced soon, the two companies intend to spend a total of more than 400 billion yen to set up some 3.4 million fiber-optic lines in addition to those projected for the current fiscal year.

By the end of March 2008, 9.5 million subscribers are expected.

Under its medium-term business strategy, NTT aims to expand its fiber-optic network to 30 million lines by 2010.