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| March 16, 2006 |
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| TOKYO, JAPAN – NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) and 13 Asian telecom companies offering Arcstar-brand global network services renewed their commitment to service quality, including the newly added category of "network delivery," during the fifth annual Arcstar Carrier Forum, which was held in Tokyo from March 14 to 17. In advance of the first forum in 2000, NTT Com calculated that more than 60 percent of the problems its customers experienced with end-to-end international network services, including rental routers, were due to malfunctions in access lines provided by local carriers. NTT Com found that this issue made it difficult for its multinational customers to maintain end-to-end network quality. Consequently, NTT Com and its partners began to address the problem through the annual Arcstar Carrier Forum, which would allow network maintenance engineers to meet each year to share information about effective measures for raising network quality. Subsequently, problems in access lines provided by local carriers have decreased about 10%. This year's forum marked further progress in efforts to address network delivery issues, specifically the fact that during the delivery phase, 13.8 percent of these problems such as insufficient quality of access lines from the local carriers occur. Since on-time delivery is crucial for customers, NTT Com found it necessary to implement further changes at the forum. Therefore, in addition to maintenance engineers, network delivery engineers also attended this year's forum. All participants agreed to adopt new "key performance indicators" to minimize the time and related problems of delivering networks. The participants also agreed to continue observing various other key performance indicators to ensure operational and service quality for maximum customer satisfaction: - Assure 99.9 percent of end-to-end network availability, including access line - Recover from access line failure within 2-4 hours (average) - Improve the success ratio of identifying reasons for network failures - Inform customers two weeks prior to planned outage - Review quality on a consistent and periodic basis The forum, which was first held in 2000, enables Arcstar Partners to collectively set service quality targets. Following each forum, the participants conduct regular reviews under a Plan-Do-Check-Action scheme. Additionally, customers highly evaluate the beneficial effects of the plan, in terms of improved service quality and customer satisfaction. NTT Com customers Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc, Ford Motor Company, and CA* attended the forum as special guests to present what multinational companies expect of telecom carriers, particularly in regard to the maintenance of service-quality levels across geographic regions of the world. *Corporate details are as follows: Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. http://www.ml.com Ford Motor Company http://www.ford.com CA http://ca.com About NTT Com NTT Communications is a subsidiary of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) Corporation (NYSE: NTT) - one of the world's largest telecommunications companies. NTT Com provides high-quality, technologically advanced network management, security and solution services to consumers, corporations and governments on a global basis, with a special focus on the Asia-Pacific region. Its world-class backbone network, combined with the networks of partner companies around the world, offers access to more than 200 countries. NTT Com Group has more than 30 companies in the Asia-Pacific region, Europe and the Americas. The company has garnered several awards for its leading edge technologies, outstanding performance and customer service, including "World Communication Awards Best Customer Care - 2005." For more information, please visit http://www.ntt.com Attachment Arcstar Partners |
