NTT Corp. said Friday its net profit jumped 2.8-fold to a record 643.86 billion yen for the year through March, helped by strong earnings at its mobile phone unit, NTT DoCoMo Inc.

Yet, Japan's largest telecommunications company expects a fall in revenue and profit for the current fiscal year, as its fixed-line phone business continues to lose its clients to Internet telephony.

"DoCoMo logged increased revenue and profits, driven by its i-mode business, and NTT East and West made solid progress in their cost-cutting efforts," Norio Wada, NTT president and chief executive, told a news conference.

During fiscal 2003, NTT's revenue grew 1.6 percent to 11.1 trillion yen, with the strong growth of DoCoMo more than offsetting a sales decline in the group's fixed-line units.

The group's local fixed-line operators -- NTT East and NTT West -- and long-distance carrier NTT Communications saw their combined revenue drop by 178.5 billion yen during the period.

NTT, a former state monopoly, has suffered shrinking revenue from voice communications on its fixed-line network, with a growing number of users defecting to Internet Protocol telephony, which offers far cheaper rates.

The group does offer its own IP telephone services, but they have failed to make up for the fall in traditional fixed-line phone services.

Yet cost-cutting measures helped fixed-line subsidiaries increase their profits. Together, with bolstered profits from DoCoMo, NTT's operating profit jumped 14 percent to 1.56 trillion yen, also a record high.

The company's outlook for the current fiscal year is rather bleak, as it expects a sharp drop in revenue and operating profit.

The company said cost-cutting efforts are unlikely to compensate for a bigger fall expected in its fixed-line business.

And DoCoMo also expects a drop in revenue and earnings, as it will introduce a flat-rate for its i-mode service to promote its high-speed FOMA service.

NTT, however, projects 1 percent growth in its net profit, helped by sales of AT&T Wireless shares formerly held by DoCoMo.

Wada said that in both its mobile and fixed-line businesses, the communications giant has reached a turning point. "We want to position fiscal 2004 as the bottom year and to make a rebound in the following year," he said.