Cheers. I try to keep my disdain based on facts.
I have Googled and Googled for some of the past NTT atrocities, but they are hard to find. As such, I have to go from my memory, but I
do remember that the first DSL provider in Japan was Tokyo Metallic. I was a member.
They were tiny, and had a gaijin on the staff to talk to all of the foreign members. A lot of the info I got was from him, but basically, the guy that founded the company was a former NTT board member. He quit and sued, and won. One of the articles I found made it sound more like he convinced them to open the lines. So, not sure. Also, many homes required NTT to come and do a hardware fix on the lines. The repairmen would come and sign people up for NTT DSL at this point as opposed to the 3rd party provider that made the appointment for the construction. By the time they found out, it was too late.
NTT has been a thorn in the world's boo-tay for ages...specifically the international telecoms world. Their ridiculous costs have kept foreign providers out of Japan for decades. As such, the US has always hated them. Another story that I can't find any record of, but was a real deal, was NTT tried to buy a major backbone in the US. At the time, NTT was 55% (or more) government owned. They put the bid in, and the FBI pulled the national security card, and the J-government had to divest enough NTT stock to make it majority privately owned. That was 1999 if memory serves.
EDIT: Actually found it
here. No mention of the year, but they do mention the Clinton administration. It just seemed like a massive finger to NTT for not playing ball on their fees. I can't say I blame them. The result was the aforementioned divesting.
NTT still sucks, big time, but their grip on the public in general has slipped a lot. Mobile phones have made landlines almost useless. Until a few years ago they required a one-time fee of 70,000 yen or so for a "ken" which was basically your contract with them to have a land line. It was resellable which was nice, but it was still ridiculous, and a perfect example of Japan's retardedly expensive infrastructure which I'm convinced has stagnated it's economy for 2 decades. It's simply too expensive to do very basic stuff, which makes the cost of business rise, which is then passed on to the consumer. In the bubble, this was great. Now? Not so much. Here's some crap you have to put up w/ when you're doing business in Japan.
-Incorporation costed me about 300,000 yen -- note that probably half of that was having a 3rd party set it up
-Closing said corporation will cost about the same.
-Filing corporate taxes is a minimum of 70,000 yen. This is a filing fee, NOT your tax. If you make negative money, you still owe the government 70,000 yen for the fiscal year.
-Changing the address of your company is a 1-page form, and costs 40,000 yen. Chalk up another 40,000 yen if you're dumb enough to have a 3rd party prepare it for you (I was once).
-Changing the address of the owner of the company is a similar form, and 10,000 yen.
-The business line costs above (at least)
-Reikin (key money) is almost gone, but moving fees are still pricey. This goes for homes or businesses. Key money originated from the government introducing rent control. They just didn't go anywhere after rent control ceased. Of course, the government didn't come in and regulate key money.
Anyway, you get the idea. I'm in no way one of these "small business Republicans" (quite the opposite) but there is something to be said about giving people and small businesses financial freedom to make some dough.