Executive Summary

On October 24-26, 2022, IOWN Global Forum hosted its first hybrid member meeting in New York City. With 136 in-person attendees from 44 organizations and over 300 online attendees, the meeting fostered significant collaboration and discussion about the Forum’s goals and vision for the next few years. This year’s member meeting was the Forum’s first hybrid gathering, allowing for members to finally meet some of their peers in person, offering a level of connection, collaboration and conversation that had not been available before.

IOWN Global Forum Officer, Intel Fellow and Chief Technologist for Intel Wireless Technologies & Standards at Intel, Geng Wu, Ph. D., kicked off the Opening Message and IOWN Global Forum Director and Head of Standardization and Industry Environment at Nokia Ulrich Dropmann led the Opening Keynote “Sustainability and 2030s Networking.” Throughout the meeting, members gave presentations and held all member discussions, operating sessions, and workshops in person. Numerous in-person networking opportunities were attended that gave opportunities for members to connect face-to-face and discuss the Forum’s vision. Geraldine Calvignac, Vision Steering Committee Chair and Research Program Manager at Orange Innovation, and Lieven Levrau of Nokia and Vice Chair of the Technical Steering Committee presented the IOWN Global Forum’s Vision 2030 Roadmap and additional meeting sessions focused on use cases, Proof-of-Concept (PoCs), infrastructure and the Road to 6G. Lastly, an award ceremony was held to recognize the tremendous efforts of a select few of the Forum’s members toward realizing its goals. The success of this meeting was felt unanimously by the attendees as the goals set for this meeting were far exceeded.

Opening Message and Keynote

IOWN Global Forum Officer, Intel Fellow and Chief Technologist for Intel Wireless Technologies & Standards at Intel, Geng Wu, Ph. D., welcomed attendees to the meeting, discussing the Forum’s substantial achievements, such as growing to over 100 members all while facing adversity from the pandemic.

The opening message was followed by IOWN Global Forum Director and Head of Standardization and Industry Environment at Nokia Ulrich Dropmann’s keynote address, “Sustainability and 2030s Networking.” During his talk, he discussed the innovations that are being made to reduce the networking industry’s footprint, as well as the Forum’s future work to increase sustainability.

“There is no green without digital.” – Ulrich Dropmann

New Company Introductions

IOWN Global Forum is proud to have passed its 100-member milestone this year. The following members gave brief introductions about their companies and their interest and expectations for the IOWN Global Forum:

Sponsor Member: SK Telecom

General Members: Commscope, Hazama Ando Corporation, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., Mitsui Knowledge Industry, Co., LTD, Qualcomm, RICOH Company, Ltd., SCSK

Academic Members: Osaka University, SBI Graduate School

Affiliate Member: IBM Japan, Ltd

Research Member: Institute for Information Industry, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

Member Presentations

Six presentations from five IOWN Global Forum member companies, including one academic member, were given on topics and their ties to IOWN technology, including 5G, digital twin technology, smart city security and more over the three days. Presenting companies included NEC, Nokia, Orange, and Vivotek, while the presenting academic member was Osaka University.

On October 24, Philippe Chanclou, Ph. D., Team Manager: Fixed Access Networks at Orange Labs, presented on all photonic access networks and its support of 5G, such as x-haul transport, with a focus on resiliency and low-latency requirements. Professor Hideyuki Shimonshi, Cyber Media Center, Osaka University, also discussed a digital-twin technology proposal that would promote safe and efficient coexistence and collaboration among humans and things, such as robots and cars.

On October 25, Flavio Cirillo, Ph. D., Senior Research Scientist at NEC, presented on the connections between IOWN, data spaces, digital twin technology and FIWARE. He explained that data spaces create a communal infrastructure to interconnect data providers, consumers and prosumers. Steve Ma, Ph. D., Executive VP at Vivotek, also talked about digital data in the security ecosystem. He discussed a platform-based approach to encourage collaboration in AI applications with example use cases.

On the last day, October 26, Philip Ji, Ph. D., Senior Researcher at NEC Laboratories America, discussed smart city security applications through fiber sensing, detailing how these solutions could provide large-scale security monitoring applications, such as gunshot and drone detection. Theodore Sizer, Ph. D., VP and Domain Leader, IP and Optical Networking Research at Nokia Bell Lab, also presented the challenges that multi-domain networks face when it comes to enhanced consumer and industrial expectations and how to evolve to meet these expectations.

Member Discussions, Operating Sessions, and Workshops

Rich member discussions, as well as many breakout sessions, took place during the meeting, including vision and roadmap updates and PoC strategy. Geraldine Calvignac, Vision Steering Committee Chair and Research Program Manager at Orange Innovation, and Lieven Levrau of Nokia and Vice Chair of the Technical Steering Committee updated the Forum on its vision and roadmap updates. She discussed the Forum’s significant progress on key requirements, use cases and Proof of Concept (PoC) driven specification work, as well as progress on new societal, environmental and technological trends. Yosuke Aragane of NTT and PoC Task Force co-leader held the PoC strategy discussion, where they discussed the key features in the Forum’s PoC to help realize IOWN use cases and technologies and what the next steps are to accelerate them.

Operating sessions discussing marketing and promotion strategy, as well as liaison strategy, were also held. The liaison strategy operating session was held by Hans Werner Bitzer of NEC, Chair of the Liaison Working Group, and Yoshinori Goto, Liaison Working Group Vice Chair. They discussed multiple points including opportunities and needs to further develop their relationship radar to visualize the status of the Forum’s external relationships.

Lastly, four workshops were held. Masahisa Kawashima of NTT and Technical Working Group Chair held the “Data Center Decentralization and IOWN Technologies” workshop, where they discussed the future of data centers, the technical challenges involved, and how IOWN technology can solve those problems. Lieven Levrau of Nokia and the Technical Steering Committee Vice Chair held the “Road to 6G with IOWN – Empowering the Future” workshop, where he discussed several use cases and possible technologies that could help achieve the use cases’ goals. Katsutoshi Itoh of Sony Group and Use Case Working Group Chair held the “New IOWN Use Cases” workshop, where the group went over use cases, including digital twin, metaverse, expanding IOWN coverage, and more. Hidetsugu Sugiyama of Red Hat and PoC Task Force co-leader held the “Open Programmable Infrastructure for IOWN Platform and IOWN Security” workshop, where he discussed the open programmable infrastructure project, DPU/IPU use cases and the IOWN 5G/6G mobile network workload, among others.

IOWN Global Forum Contributor Award

Eight members of the IOWN Global Forum were recognized for their tremendous work towards the development of initial use case and technology documents, the development of release one documents, and outstanding contributions in other areas. The award winners were:

Milestone 1 (Development of Initial Use Case and Technology Documents)

Gary Li, Intel

Ryosuke Kurebayashi, NTT

Yuichi Morioka, Sony Group

Milestone 2 (Development of Release 1 Documents)

Hideki Nishizawa, NTT

Hidetsugu Sugiyama, Red Hat

Ting Wang, NEC

Outstanding Contributions in Other Areas

Hiroki Takahira, Fujitsu

Tomoko Morishita, NTT

Summary of the Recap Discussion

Before concluding the meeting, a recap session was held to summarize discussion points made during the event. These points centered around the Forum’s Vision 2030 goal for a smarter, sustainable world for all humankind, as well as the Forum’s goal to be recognized as an industry leader in the next two years for creating next-generation communication and infrastructure technology.

Closing Remarks

To wrap up the meeting, Heychyi Young, Director of IOWN Global Forum Director and Vice President of Telecommunication Laboratories at Chunghwa Telecom, delivered closing remarks. She touched on the Forum’s overall goal to be recognized as an industry leader within the next two years and summarized the great discussion and collaboration that occurred during the meeting and throughout the year. Lastly, she announced the date of the next IOWN Global Forum Member Meeting: April 2023.

We thank you all for your support and involvement in making this 5th Member Meeting a success. We also would like to thank all of our sponsors, CHT, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Nokia, NTT, Orange, Red Hat, and Sony Group, for their support. We look forward to future Member Meetings with IOWN Global Forum members.

Many presentations, photos, and recordings from the 5th Member Meeting are now available to IOWN Global Forum members via the Member Portal. If you are interested in becoming a member, learn how to join today.