New NTT Chief Eager to Bolster Overseas Operations

June 27, 2018

Tokyo- Jun Sawada, new president of Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. <9432>, has expressed his eagerness to beef up the Japanese telecommunications group's overseas operations.

"We hope to enhance the added value (of foreign operations) to gain competitiveness," Sawada told a press conference in Tokyo on Tuesday.

He indicated that he will take advantage of the NTT group's vast business areas in information technology services, including telecommunications, cloud services and system development.

Sawada took office as president of the NTT group's holding company following a board meeting held after a general meeting of the firm's shareholders on Tuesday.

With an eye on U.S. giants International Business Machines Corp. and Amazon.com Inc., which NTT considers its rivals overseas, Sawada said that his company has a wide range of technologies and that no other firms are able to offer such technologies all at once.

He stressed that providing corporate customers overseas with the NTT group's technologies and services will help the group's earnings, as well as growth in both sides.

Sales at three domestic units--NTT East Corp., NTT West Corp. and NTT Docomo Inc. <9437>-- accounted for some 60 pct of NTT's consolidated sales for the business year ended in March.

"We need to carry out internal reforms to improve the efficiency of domestic operations," Sawada said.

He also revealed that NTT will mount efforts, such as automating routine office work using artificial intelligence. Jiji Press