NTT Publishes “The Identity of IOWN,” Detailing Optical-Photonic Transformation and Vision for a Sustainable, Data-Driven Future

Ahead of Upgrade 2025, NTT Corporation (NTT) has released the English-language edition of “The Identity of IOWN,” a book authored by Akira Shimada, president and CEO of NTT, and Katsuhiko Kawazoe, senior executive vice president and CTO of the company.

Now available on Amazon, the book provides a comprehensive overview of the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) initiative, a cornerstone of NTT’s strategy to reshape the digital infrastructure of the future.

First introduced in 2019, the IOWN Initiative is NTT’s long-term vision for a photonics-based communications and computing platform.

It aims to address the growing demands of a data-driven society while tackling environmental concerns through significantly improved power efficiency and computing performance. The goal is to replace traditional electronic systems with optical technologies, enabling faster, smarter, and more energy-efficient networks to support future innovations like AI, IoT, and beyond.

“The Identity of IOWN” was published in conjunction with NTT’s annual research and innovation summit, Upgrade, which is being held in San Francisco on April 9–10, 2025. The summit’s theme, “Innovation for the New Reality,” aligns with the book’s message, highlighting technologies such as artificial intelligence, photonics, quantum computing, and autonomous medical systems.

In the book, Shimada addresses the urgent need for sustainable innovation. “The price of humanity’s rapid industrial development has been the heavy burden placed upon the Earth,” he writes. “There is a way to simultaneously achieve solutions for both issues—the challenges and opportunities posed by the internet and the need to manage power usage to ensure global sustainability—and thereby create a better society – through the IOWN Initiative.”

The initiative outlines four major stages of development, starting with IOWN 1.0, which saw the initial commercialization of the All-Photonics Network (APN) in March 2023. The APN eliminates the need for optical-electronic-optical conversions, vastly improving the efficiency of long-distance data transmission.

In 2024, NTT introduced IOWN 2.0, focusing on computing infrastructure and the development of photonics-electronics convergence (PEC) devices. These devices are intended to connect computer boards using light rather than electricity, with commercialization expected in 2026.

Future stages include IOWN 3.0 around 2029, which will miniaturize PEC devices for use between semiconductor chips, and IOWN 4.0 around 2032, where optical signaling is expected to take place inside the chips themselves.

These technological advancements are designed to support three primary performance goals: a 100-fold increase in power efficiency, a 125-fold improvement in transmission capacity, and a 200-fold reduction in latency.

Kawazoe describes the project as “unlimited innovation,” explaining how IOWN pushes the boundaries of current technological assumptions. He states that it allows us to “paint a picture of a new future by leaping past the limits of our thinking that is premised on the technologies at our disposal now.”

The book details the technical roadmap and explores the potential societal benefits of IOWN, ranging from advanced healthcare applications to next-generation entertainment and smart infrastructure.

Sean Lawrence, vice president and head of NTT’s IOWN Development Office, highlighted the global relevance of the initiative. “NTT was able to foresee the data transmission and processing demands of the future, conceptualizing IOWN after decades of fundamental research and development in optics and computing. The need for IOWN is further exacerbated by AI, and we look to IOWN to unlock AI’s full potential in a far more sustainable way.”

IOWN is backed by the IOWN Global Forum, founded in 2020 by NTT, Intel, and Sony Group. The Forum now includes over 150 global members such as Cisco, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA, reflecting widespread industry support.