Nippon Telegraph and Telephone President Akira Shimada on Wednesday suggested the need to end the domestic telegram services of its group firms NTT East and NTT West.
“Discussions on ending (the telegram services) at some point should be advanced in public,” Shimada said at a news conference.
The telegram services have been hit by a sharp decline in the number of users.
Still, they continue to be used to send messages for events such as weddings and funerals, and abolishing them would require government approval.
A supplementary provision of the telecom business law stipulates that only NTT East, NTT West and KDDI are allowed to operate telegram services.
The annual number of telegrams the NTT group handles peaked at about 95 million in the 1960s, when the group was still Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public, and plummeted 96% in about 60 years to about 3.8 million amid the spread of more accessible online communication methods such as email and messaging apps.
The most common reason for using telegrams was emergency communication during the peak period, accounting for 86%, but congratulatory and condolence messages have accounted for over 90% in recent years.
NTT East and NTT West are currently streamlining unprofitable businesses.
They announced last month that they will end the publication of TownPage yellow pages.
They have also decided to abolish their Dial 104 telephone directory assistance service and Dial 177 weather information service.