From 14-17 April 2026, the IOWN Global Forum welcomed more than 250 delegates from 68 organizations and over 20 countries to Sydney, Australia, for its Annual Member Meeting. This event serves as the primary working meeting of the Forum, bringing together leaders from across the global ecosystem to align business demand with photonic breakthroughs. Discussions focused on advancing deployment models, integration practices, and collaborative work needed to move next-generation infrastructure into real-world use. The meeting reinforced both the scale of the opportunity ahead and the growing momentum across regions, sectors, and infrastructure layers of the implementation models of the IOWN Global Forum.
Sydney provided an important setting for this year’s discussions. Across plenary sessions, working meetings, exhibits, and the public-facing FUTURES Sydney event, participants focused on how the Forum can help address the growing demands of the AI era. Discussions emphasized infrastructure that is faster, more responsive, more resilient, and economically viable. That direction was reflected in a newly endorsed value proposition that centers on uniting a broad ecosystem of thought leaders to align business demand with photonic innovation and scale solutions through new deployment models and integration practices.
The meeting also featured valuable outside perspectives on the broader digital infrastructure landscape. Special guests contributed insights on AI implementation, infrastructure investment, telecommunications trends, and responsible innovation. These conversations helped frame the Forum’s technical work within a larger market and business context, reinforcing the need for open, deployable, multi-stakeholder approaches to future infrastructure.
Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, IOWN Global Forum Chair and President, also highlighted the importance of external collaboration as the Forum responds to growing demand for AI-ready infrastructure. In particular, he emphasized the value of the Forum’s collaboration with the Open Compute Project Foundation in advancing the development of AI computing infrastructure. That message was reinforced by George Tchaparian, CEO of OCP, who spoke to the value of working with the IOWN Global Forum to help realize infrastructure capable of supporting AI-based services and applications.
A key theme throughout the week was progress toward implementation. Closing plenary updates highlighted active work across the Technology Working Group and related task forces. Focus areas included continued advancement in Open APN work, techno-economic analysis, data-centric AI continuum design, network digital twin capabilities, computing continuum services, fiber sensing, energy efficiency, and new proof-of-concept proposals. Members also discussed defining IOWN Global Forum service categories and product-oriented activities to support collective market creation efforts.
The Use Case Working Group underscored that several efforts are moving beyond concept development and toward more implementation-focused activity. Updates included continued progress on mobility, area management, and industry management use cases, advancing proofs of concept, and a renewed effort to develop stronger external-facing proposition documents and “master stories” to more clearly communicate early adoption value. The meeting also highlighted emerging opportunities for large-scale test-bed and commercial deployment environments.
From a strategic and market-facing standpoint, the Marketing Steering Committee shared updates on key priorities for the year ahead. Priorities now moving forward include the Board-requested market-sizing project, targeted stakeholder messaging for audiences such as OEMs, operators, and government stakeholders, deeper coordination with techno-economic analysis work, continued website development, and expanded content that communicates the business value of Forum use cases.
The meeting also reflected the Forum’s continued focus on ecosystem building. Dr. Kawazoe noted the importance of collaboration with organizations such as the Open Compute Project Foundation and ETSI as the Forum works to connect photonics-based innovation with the broader infrastructure landscape. Collaboration with OCP supports work related to AI computing infrastructure, while collaboration with ETSI helps align the Forum’s complete architecture for future network and computing infrastructure with global standardization efforts. Together, these relationships reinforce the Forum’s role in helping shape infrastructure approaches that anticipate future demands, including the evolution of AI and the quantum computing era.
FUTURES Sydney, the Forum’s public event held alongside the member meeting, once again helped extend the conversation beyond Forum membership. Presentations and discussions focused on AI infrastructure, security, sovereignty, telecommunications demand drivers, and practical industry implications, giving external audiences a clearer view of how the Forum’s work connects to real business and societal needs. View the replay on the Forum’s YouTube channel
The Annual Member Meeting also showcased the support of organizations that helped make the event possible. Accenture served as Meeting Host, with 1FINITY and NTT, Inc. as Meeting Sponsors. The Forum also recognized this year’s exhibitors: Nokia, NTT, Inc., Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Kyocera Communication Systems Co., Ltd., and 1FINITY.
In Sydney, the Forum also welcomed five new member organizations: Adtran, Arteria Networks Corporation, Baycurrent, Dassault Systèmes, and TPSCo. Their addition further strengthens the Forum’s ability to bring together expertise across technology, infrastructure, software, consulting, and communications to shape deployable next-generation solutions.
The Annual Member Meeting also included the re-election of Directors to the IOWN Global Forum Board of Directors, an important governance milestone for the organization. Re-elected Directors include Per Beming, Ericsson; Derrick Buckley, Microsoft; Dr. Rong-Ruey Lee, CHT; Giovanni Manto, Nokia; and Chris Wright, Red Hat. Their continued leadership will help guide the Forum as members advance the IOWN Global Forum Methodology, implementation models, and collaborative work needed to support deployable next-generation infrastructure.
As the meeting concluded, one message was clear: the IOWN Global Forum is continuing to shift from vision-setting to implementation. Members are aligning technical progress, business framing, ecosystem engagement, and deployment thinking to help photonics-based innovation scale across vendors, sectors, and regions. Sydney marked another important step in that journey.
View photos from the meeting in the Flickr album
Members can also access videos and presentations from the Opening and Closing Plenaries, on the IOWN Global Forum Member Platform (Member login required):
The Forum now looks ahead to its next gatherings in Milan, Italy, 16–18 June, 2026, (Workshop II) and the Midterm Member Meeting in Amsterdam, Netherlands, 29 September – 2 October 2026.
