KDD, the country's leading international telecommunications carrier, reported on Thursday a decline in sales to 153 billion yen for the April-September period, an 8.1 percent fall from the same period last year.
The carrier saw its pretax profit drop to 9.2 billion yen, down 36 percent from last year, and net profit decline to 4.5 billion yen, down 45.1 percent. Although traffic on international lines grew 4.1 percent in the six months, it does not balance the drop in income, said KDD President Tadashi Nishimoto, who blamed the decline on the introduction of discount rates.
The level of traffic in international telephone calls is almost unchanged from the previous term, while Internet traffic has increased, Nishimoto said. Nishimoto also cited the sluggish economies of Japan and other Asian nations as a reason for the drop in profit, as it has discouraged callers from making international connections.
Figures for domestic service were not included in the report, Nishimoto explained, because it is so new. KDD began offering local connections in July.