DIDs FEATURED ARTICLE

NTT Communications has been named the Best North American Wholesale Carrier at the Capacity Global Carrier Awards 2015.

The award took place on November 3. It’s the second year in a row that NTT (News - Alert) has won the award.

"NTT Com is fully committed to helping customers achieve their business goals in North America and around the world with the continued expansion of its Tier-1 Global IP Network," Michael Wheeler, executive vice president of the NTT Communications (News - Alert) global IP network at NTT America, said. "We are honored that the Global Carrier Awards panel has recognized our efforts.”

While the Japanese carrier might not be that well known to westerners who don’t follow the mobile industry, it’s one of the biggest carriers in its home country, with its Docomo service pioneering mobile Internet a full decade before it became common in the West.

The company has been successful wholesaling Internet connectivity to other carriers internationally. It’s recently opened PoPs in Boston and Marseille, France.

NTT has been aggressive in expanding 100G, SDN and IPv6 internationally. It’s also been busy running undersea cables and building data centers around the world.

Even with the talk of the country’s economic “Lost Decade,” Japan has certainly been an innovator in mobile technology. SMS, camera phones, mobile internet, mobile gaming and mobile payments took off there first before spreading to the rest of the world.

While mobile applications themselves might be small, their continuous back-and-forth sending of data puts a lot of strain on networks as usage increases. With an estimated 110.4 million mobile users in Japan alone, NTT and other carriers in the country have had to perfect their infrastructure, giving them the expertise to expand their networks in the West.

The award recognizes that NTT and other Japanese companies continue to innovate on the back end. The company also won an award for the Best Global (Data) and Best North American Wholesale Carrier last year as well as Best Pan-Asian Wholesale Carrier in 2013.