Sony Corp. and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. will work together to provide movies, games and other content to home Internet users via NTT's fiber-optic network and Sony's PlayStation2 game console, company officials said Saturday.
The service will make it possible to download video content much faster than via NTT's Integrated Service Digital Network service, they said.
Sony's video-game business unit, Sony Computer Entertainment Inc., and NTT West Corp., a regional carrier in western Japan under NTT, plan to start the service on a trial basis in NTT West's area in December until March.
The partners plan to start full commercial service as early as possible in 2001, pending the outcome of the trial run, for which a subsidy of 400 million yen has been made available by the Posts and Telecommunications Ministry, the officials said.
Sony Pictures Television Inc., a Sony unit specializing in TV program distribution, will provide music, animation programs and other content, while NTT West will provide a fiber-optic network with single connections serving dozens of households to cut telecommunications costs, they said.
Sony expects to ship 5.41 million PlayStation2 consoles domestically by next March -- and an additional 6 million units abroad -- after the game was introduced in March this year.