TOKYO, Japan — NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), the ICT solutions and international communications business within the NTT Group (TKO:9432), reported today that on September 12 and 13 it held its "Arcstar Carrier Forum 2017", an international conference attended by partner carriers and customers aimed at further improving the quality of its global network services and the customer satisfaction. These include Arcstar Universal One, NTT Com's enterprise VPN service delivered in more than 190 countries.

Under this year's theme "Operational Excellence Based On Mutual Recognition," the conference—the 14th to be held since 2000—was the first to which NTT Com also invited customers in addition to its partner carriers, a move aimed at developing strategies for service improvement that are based more closely on actual usage scenarios. Nine customer organizations joined 27 leading global telecommunications partners at the event.

Topics discussed at this year’s Forum included ways of reducing the outage duration, outage ratio, delivery troubles, and the submission of more accurate outage information to customers. As the leading provider of global SD-WAN solutions, NTT Com is committed to shaping the discussion with our partners in support of the evolving global business needs of our customers.

The event program included the following:

• Presentations by customers of their expectations of network service providers and of the importance of network service quality
• Seminars by NTT Com providing details to the partner carriers of its proposed network service strategies, the importance of continuous quality improvements, the need to understand the service levels required by customers and the importance of delivering solutions tailored to meet these
• A presentation by the global research and consulting firm Frost & Sullivan summarizing the latest IT industry trends, including software-designed wide area networks (SD-WAN), and emphasizing the importance of improving customers' experiences
• A panel discussion by customers, partner carriers and NTT Com representatives on the kinds of network service strategies that support customers' global business expansion, and the service elements that customers most need network service providers to deliver
• A group discussion where participants shared suggestions for improving service quality in the area of network delivery and operations
• Presentation by the partner carriers and by NTT Com of examples of service quality improvement measures undertaken by them
• Presentation by NTT Com of an award to the carrier judged to have performed the best overall across a number of different service categories, including operation and delivery

NTT Com partner carriers attending Arcstar Carrier Forum 2017 were as follows:

Australia

Optus Pty Limited

Australia/Japan

Telstra Japan K.K.

Brazil

Neutrona Networks

China

China Telecommunications Corporation

China Unicom

France

Orange Business Services

Germany

Deutsche Telekom AG

Hong Kong

China Telecom Global Limited

Hutchison Global Communications Ltd.

PCCW Global Ltd.

WTT HK Limited

India

Tata Communications Ltd.

Indonesia

Biznet Networks

Indosat Ooredoo

PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia International

Korea

KT Corporation

Malaysia

Telekom Malaysia Berhad

TIME dotCom Berhad

Philippines

PLDT Inc.

South Africa

Internet Solutions

Taiwan

Chunghwa Telecom International Business Group

Thailand

CAT Telecom Public Company Limited

UK

Colt Technology Services Co., Ltd.

Interoute Communications Limited

USA

Level 3 Communications

USA/Hong Kong/Japan

Verizon Hong Kong Limited/Verizon Japan Ltd.

Vietnam

VNPT International

Message by Guest Speakers attending Arcstar Carrier Forum 2017:

Mr. Ryouta Tazuki, Deputy General Manager, Common Platform Coordination Team, IT & Systems Control Department No.1, Mizuho Bank, Ltd., a guest speaker at Arcstar Carrier Forum 2017, said: "Currently, Mizuho Financial Group has about 800 sites in Japan and about 120 sites overseas. Arcstar Global Network service provided by NTT Communications is supporting our business by providing major infrastructure connecting our overseas branches, headquarters and data centers. High stability and reliability are critical for the communications infrastructure supporting our business as a financial institution. This is why we design our redundant network without a "Single Point of Failure" as standard. The Arcstar Carrier Forum is good opportunity to see how NTT Communications and its partner carriers from all over the world are continuing their efforts to share best practices for improvement. We hope NTT Communications, as a reliable ICT partner, maintains such efforts to improve its high quality services."

Ms. Cally Ko, CIO at Delta Electronics, Inc., another guest speaker at Arcstar Carrier Forum 2017, said: "Delta Electronics, established in 1971, is the world No. 1 provider of switch power supply solutions and thermal management solutions. Delta Electronics globally has 163 sales offices, 39 plant sites, 64 R&D centers, 83,000 employees and over $7.7 billion in sales revenue up to 2016. We have grown through providing leading solutions to our customers in the telecom power system, industrial automation, passive and magnetic components, network products, visual displayers, green data center infrastructure, and renewable energy application sectors. Delta is also developing our branded business to provide diverse portfolio of energy-saving integrated solution capable to fulfill our customer's requirements. And Delta's solutions also help our customers to increase their competitiveness around the world.

Meanwhile, with the goal of continuing to innovate and deliver value to our customers, we made over 12 acquisitions of companies in Asia, North America and Europe over the past 3 years, and all of our operating groups all rely on the global Information Technology infrastructure to run their business in the highly competitive global environment. What we seek from our key Information Technology infrastructure partner of course is a highly reliable network platform, but the emphasis, more than ever, is on agility and resource-efficiency. In light of this, teamwork and trust is extremely key. With strong teamwork and shared objectives between us our key network partner NTT, and between NTT and their extended network of partners, we can achieve our goals faster, be collaborative, and push the boundaries of what is possible to prepare us for more success and growth in the future.

My key message is, please do not be satisfied with the status quo, but continuously push to improve the teamwork and collaborative processes which are necessary to be agile and competitive in the global business marketplace."

About NTT Communications Corporation

NTT Communications provides consultancy, architecture, security and cloud services to optimize the information and communications technology (ICT) environments of enterprises. These offerings are backed by the company’s worldwide infrastructure, including the leading global tier-1 IP network, the Arcstar Universal One™ VPN network reaching over 190 countries/regions, and over 140 secure data centers worldwide. NTT Communications’ solutions leverage the global resources of NTT Group companies including Dimension Data, NTT DOCOMO and NTT DATA.
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