Judge Greene must be smiling: Like AT&T before it in America, the massive Japanese phone monopolist is about to be dissolved, and the plan for it has finally been made public, the Kyodo News Service reports. Japan's Posts and Telecommunications Ministry said Thursday that NTT will be split into two regional telephone operators and a long-distance carrier under a holding company, possibly in 1999.
As happened with AT&T and the Baby Bell companies in the States, the executives of either regional carrier will be banned from concurrently working for the long-distance phone operator, and vice versa. And if the three new companies share technology, it must be done in a way that does not discriminate against other telecom companies.
The ministry instructed NTT to work out a specific breakup plan based on the guidelines, within 18 months. The new companies should emerge by mid-1999.
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Burma Shave Not Needed: Virtual billboards are about to trump those in meatspace. The chairman of the Internet Advertising Bureau seconds a recent study from McCann-Erickson that advertising revenue on the Web will pass annual sales of $1 billion. That puts it on track to surpass the $1.3 billion annually spent on traditional outdoor advertising.
"It is safe to say that we are going to hit or come close to $1 billion by year-end," says Rich LeFurgy of IAB, the online advertising trade group, speaking of ad revenues for the industry as a whole. He also says that for the medium to be taken seriously, it can't be treated as new and different before marketing clients.
"We have to prove our merits within the context of the traditional principles of audience measurement, with comparable standards, scientific measurement tools, and third-party auditing of results," LeFurgy said.(4.Dec.97)
Reuters contributed to this report.
