Global industry leaders across technology and business will meet in the United States next month to explore the future of transformative photonics-based technologies
DALLAS, TX: September 11, 2025 – On Thursday, October 2, the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (the IOWN Global Forum) will host the fourth edition of FUTURES in Dallas, one of the United States’ fastest growing technology hubs, to showcase the Forum’s mission and work with key national stakeholders. FUTURES Dallas will promote the Forum’s pioneering work in the field of networks and connectivity, showcasing efforts to deliver a future powered by photons, enabling ultra-low latency, enhanced performance resiliency, increased data transmission capacity, and sustainable solutions for a vast range of industries.
The IOWN Global Forum’s 160+ member organizations will convene at the Hyatt Regency Dallas to discuss the Forum’s goals and accomplishments with local organizations, as well as explore how they can become part of this innovative ecosystem. For the first time, FUTURES will be free of charge to attend for members and non-members. The half-day event, held in Dallas and also streamed online, will welcome leaders from the likes of member organizations BT, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, NTT, Orange, Red Hat and Sony as they discuss their achievements so far, plans for the future, and overarching goals to transform the way we live and work through optical and wireless technologies.
Event highlights: From 2-5 PM on Thursday, October 2, attendees are invited to:
- Hear from senior executives about the Forum’s latest areas of focus and the direction of future ambitions.
- Listen to the opening keynote that provides a comprehensive overview of the challenges facing organizations amid rapid global AI uptake, and how the Forum is working to solve current and future AI infrastructure challenges.
- Attend panel discussions that stimulate fruitful discussion on the industry-wide transformation that is the future of AI infrastructure and the challenges of powering the AI era.
- Hear directly from those putting research into action and learn more about the latest early adoption use-cases in areas such as financial services, remote media production, green computing in remote GPU and as a first for FUTURES Dallas, remote tunnel construction.
- Experience on-site exhibits that showcase the work of the Forum’s members and understand how these use-cases can be applied to diverse sectors.
- Establish relationships and build connections with leading names across technology, business, and academia.
Demos: On-site demonstrations and exhibits will include:
- 1FINITY Inc: the 1FINITY T900, a liquid-cooled transponder that delivers the highest long-haul transport performance; 1FINITY T250, an end-to-end all-photonics network (APN) solution; and 1FINITY™ P300 800G ZR/ZR+, an open, high-performance and sustainable coherent pluggable transceiver for optical networking solutions.
- Anritsu: a virtual tester for data center and cloud evaluation.
- Chunghwa Telecom: the ‘Optical Duplexer’, featured in the ‘APN with Optical Duplexer Innovative Architecture’, which employs EC technology to effectively mitigate time synchronization errors that arise from asymmetric optical transmission paths.
- Hazama Ando Corporation: a construction site proof of concept.
- NTT: technology enabling real-time, ultra-low latency communication by sensing and transmitting muscle and eye movements, empowering individuals with physical challenges to express themselves and participate in activities like global e-sports and remote DJing.
- NTT and ITRI: a Composable Disaggregated Infrastructure (CDI) system that connects multiple high-speed resources, like GPUs and SSDs, using advanced optical interfaces for ultra-fast (up to 3.2 Tbps) data transfers.
- Pegatron Corp: an open platform 400G transponder/muxponder with disaggregated hardware and software, enabling operators to build interoperable solutions using TIP OOPT standards.
The IOWN Global Forum recognizes that creating interconnected global networks is key to accelerating innovation, broadening opportunities for access across multiple industries, and fuelling economic and business advancement. Yet, realizing sustainable, high-performing network and computing systems can only be accomplished through inclusive, worldwide collaboration that unites all corners of the technology landscape.
Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, President and Chairperson of the IOWN Global Forum, commented: “The IOWN Global Forum is looking forward to hosting the 4th edition of FUTURES in Dallas, the first time the event has come to the United States. The Forum is pleased to continue spearheading innovation and collaboration across industries, geographies, and competitive boundaries to manage the future challenges of bringing the AI Infrastructure of the future to life. FUTURES Dallas is an exceptional moment for the Forum to further efforts in building a community of members that are pushing to lead industry-wide transformations into a more sustainable and equitable world, powered by light.”
Key event details:
Date: Thursday, October 2, 2025
Time: 2:00 PM – 5:00 PM CDT, followed by a networking reception
Location: Hyatt Regency Dallas, 300 Reunion Blvd, Dallas, TX 75207, United States (there will also be a live online broadcast via Webex)
Key URLs: Event Overview and Registration Page
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 160 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 IOWN Global Forum – Innovative Optical and Wireless Network.
Contacts
Media Contacts
Joe Hatt
IOWN Global Forum
press@iowngf.org
