Telecommunications

September 2003

The Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. group aims to develop a Linux operating system specifically tailored for telecommunications operations, by joining the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL). U.S. firms dominate the development of technology for servers and routers, which are becoming an increasingly important part of telecommunications infrastructure. To counter this, NTT seeks to nurture software technology. The group plans to install the operating system on its computer systems used for such work as customer data management. But NTT's ultimate goal is to develop an operating system that will control its telecommunications operations. A telecom operating system would emphasize reliability much more than an operating system for computers. Current telephone operating systems prioritize maintaining connections even when equipment malfunctions. Operating systems for computers reset the devices whenever they detect problems, so are not suited for use in telecom operations. Consequently, NTT aims to develop an operating system specifically designed for use in a telecommunications infrastructure.　(September 25, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun)