Members from industry-leading organizations met in Dallas, Texas to advance their mission to revolutionize lives through speed-of-light technologies

The Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN Global Forum) marked another milestone at the start of October, hosting its Midterm Member Meeting in Dallas, Texas. The event brought together over 240 attendees from its 170+ member organizations for a series of panels, presentations, and technology showcases that demonstrated the Forum’s expanding global scope and its latest advances in next-generation network innovation.

Participants representing the world’s leading technology and vertical sector companies gathered to discuss the next wave of opportunities and challenges in the era of AI-driven infrastructure, photonics-based connectivity, and sustainable digital transformation. Including presentations at the event’s opening plenary session from non-member, local industry and academic experts Professor Andrea Fumagalli (University of Texas at Dallas), John Gibbons (AT&T), and Dr. Clifford Grossner (Open Compute Project).

FUTURES Dallas

The centrepiece of the meeting, FUTURES Dallas - the first public event for the IOWN Global Forum in the US - showcased the mission and achievements of the Forum to external audiences. Highlights include:

• A keynote by Gregory Allen, Senior Advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who provided a comprehensive overview of the wealth of opportunities and challenges in the global AI infrastructure market, as major technology players drive unprecedented investment and innovation.
• A cross-industry panel on AI infrastructure, moderated by Computer Weekly’s Networking Editor, Joe O’Halloran, featuring Steven Lim (NTT Global Data Centers), Rick Lievano (Microsoft), and Dr. Geng Wu (Intel). The discussion addressed the practical realities of building the next generation of digital infrastructure.
• Thought leadership presentations from Dr. Gonzalo Camarillo (Ericsson), Dr. Masahisa Kawashima (NTT), and Dr. Sameh Yamany (VIAVI Solutions).
• Technology exhibits and demonstrations from member companies including 1FINITY, Anritsu, Chunghwa Telecom, Hazama Ando Corporation, Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), NTT, and Pegatron, showcasing innovations in optical networking for diverse industry use cases.

Implementation of the Year Award: Redefining the future of entertainment

A highlight of the event was the presentation of the 2025 Implementation of the Year Award to Sony and its partners (Fujitsu, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Keysight Technologies and NEC Corporation) for the “Reference Implementation Model for the Interactive Live Music Entertainment Use Case”. This award-winning proof-of-concept (PoC) demonstrated breakthroughs in reducing motion-to-photon latency (the total delay between when a user physically moves and when that movement is visually reflected on a display, like in VR or AR headsets) for interactive, cloud-rendered entertainment, achieving latencies as low as 6.7 milliseconds at a 360Hz refresh rate. The project sets a new benchmark for remote, immersive audience experiences at concerts and other live events and highlights the versatility of the All-Photonics Network (APN) of the IOWN Global Forum and hardware acceleration for large-scale, real-time applications.

Looking ahead to the next five years

Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, President and Chairperson of the IOWN Global Forum, commented: “Since our last public event in Stockholm, we’ve made significant progress - moving from proof-of-concept to proof-of-value, with completed PoCs now demonstrating real-world benefits. We’ve also expanded early adoption use cases into remote construction and warehouse management.”

“Looking ahead, we’re focused on scaling to real-world deployment, developing reference models, and strengthening industry partnerships. By driving collaboration, we will build the commercial case for photonics-powered networks and continue on our mission to deliver a smart, sustainable, and secure world for all.”

About the IOWN Global Forum

The IOWN Global Forum was established in 2020 as a private sector organization to develop IOWN Global Forum technologies and use cases, and is comprised of over 170 organizations. The objective of the IOWN Global Forum is to accelerate innovation and adoption of a new communication infrastructure to meet our future data and computing requirements through the development of new technologies, frameworks, specifications, and reference designs in areas such as photonics R&D, distributed computing, use cases, and best practices. For more information, visit https://iowngf.org/.

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