JAPANESE TELECOMMUNICATION REFORM AND THE STANDARDS SETTING PROCESS

The recently proposed separation of NTT into three companies would hav e caused changes in the ways in which telecommunication standards are set in Japan: (a) there would no longer have been a virtual monopsony market in telecommunication equipment in Japan, and no one firm would have dominated; (b) NTT's research labs would have been divided up and might no longer have been the primary source of Japanese standards re search effort; (c) MPT's power relative to smaller firms would have be en greater, allowing it a greater role in telecommunication standards strategy, This paper explores what some of the effects of such changes might have been. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.