Teleway Corp., a domestic long-distance telephone carrier, reported Wednesday that its operating profit for fiscal 1997 dropped 72.8 percent from the previous year to 2 billion yen.
Teleway president Kan Higashi said that the carrier, which is affiliated with Toyota Motor Corp., also reported 3.6 billion yen in pretax losses on sales of 108.5 billion yen, down 3.1 percent from the previous year due to declining charges. Higashi noted that although the firm's traffic grew 15 percent, fares for long-distance calls dropped more than 20 percent, adding that it will be difficult to increase sales of these services.