NTT Group CSR > Providing Safe and Secure Communications Services

Providing Safe and Secure Communications Services

Maintaining and managing our communications infrastructure to consistently provide highly reliable communications services
Implementing measures to prevent further failures in the Hikari Denwa optical fiber telephone service

Communications infrastructure maintenance and management

This nation's communications infrastructure plays a vital role in supporting socioeconomic activities and is indispensable as a lifeline that helps ensure public safety, which is why we build NTT Group communications equipment to withstand disasters, and operate and maintain our communications infrastructure so that it will always function properly. NTT EAST, NTT WEST, NTT Communications, and NTT DoCoMo monitor communications networks 24 hours a day, 365 days a year from their respective operations centers, and can restore service by remote switching to backup systems in the event of system failures caused by disasters or other factors.
Public telephone use has decreased due to the proliferation of mobile phones, but NTT EAST and NTT WEST continue to maintain public phones (58,000 and 51,000 respectively) to ensure that communications remain available during emergencies and natural disasters.

This is a group of photos providing an overview of the NTT Group's communications infrastructure, which boasts 35,700 outdoor base stations and 10,400 indoor base stations for mobile communications, 11.86 million telephone poles, 620,000 km of conduit lines and cable tunnels, 1.75 million km of telephone lines, optical fiber, and other types of communications cable, and 5,100 km of domestic undersea cables in Japan alone.

Topics
Agreement to develop undersea optical cable system between Japan and Russia NTT Communications and TransTeleCom of Russia signed a memorandum of understanding on February 27, 2007 to develop the Hokkaido-Sakhalin Cable System (HSCS), an undersea optical cable system that will connect Ishikari, Hokkaido in Japan and Nevelsk, Sakhalin in Russia. The project is slated for completion by the end of 2007. HSCS will be connected to TransTeleCom's 50,000 km optical fiber backbone and will be the shortest telecommunications route from Japan to Russia and Europe. HSCS will not only boost communications quality between Japan and Russia and Europe, but will also enhance international communications network reliability through augmenting the existing Indian Ocean route.

Index of Activities
Activities	Company
Agreement to develop undersea optical cable system between Japan and Russia	NTT Communications
Provision of safe, secure, and reliable services	NTT Communications

Backbone: A high-capacity communications trunk line.

Prevention of further failures in the Hikari Denwa optical fiber telephone service

Between February and December 2006 Hikari Denwa optical fiber telephone services offered by NTT EAST and NTT WEST became intermittently unavailable for brief periods, particularly from September 19 to 21 in the NTT EAST area and from October 23 to 25 in the NTT WEST area. We sincerely apologize to our customers for the considerable inconvenience caused by this problem.
Server software issues and insufficient processing capacity were behind the problem, and we are responding by retesting software and upgrading network equipment and capabilities. In addition to such initiatives to prevent reoccurrences, we have also established prompt discovery and service restoration systems and procedures to address any problems that may arise. We are looking into further ways of bolstering network reliability and minimizing the impact of system failures on our customers as we continue to improve operational methods and train engineers.