Japanese telecom giant NTT and Cerego Japan, an owner of a UGC-based social learning site Smart.fm(previously known as iKnow!), announced both had reached the agreement of the partnership in boosting online education business. NTT is now considering to set up a new subsidiary focusing on online education business, and will create a number of mash-up services with Goo[J] (a portal site by NTT Resonant[J]) and NTT DoCoMo‘s cellphone-based value-added information services by joining forces with Cerego. Cerego will allocate new shares worth USD3.37M (JPY320M, no announcement made on how much it holds in comparison to the entire shares) to NTT Investment Partners, the investment arm of NTT Group.
Meanwhile, Cerego started releasing several programs of English-language learning podcasting this week, and every week it will add approximately new 100 episodes especially designed for mastering English for significant purposes such as TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication), travel, business and preparing for university entry exam.
Masaru IKEDA