Senior technology and business leaders from across the globe will convene in Stockholm this month to discuss the future of communications infrastructure

Stockholm – April 1, 2025: On Thursday 24 April, the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (the IOWN Global Forum) will host a public event in Sweden’s thriving tech capital to discuss its collaborative efforts to deliver photonics-driven technologies for the communications infrastructure of the future. FUTURES Stockholm will promote the Forum’s speed-of-light innovation, which transitions from using electrons to photons to deliver unparalleled data capacity, ultra-low latency, performance resiliency, and advanced sustainable solutions for diverse industry sectors.

Over 250 representatives from the Forum’s 150+ member organizations will gather at the Hilton Stockholm Slussen Hotel to progress their collaborative projects. At the hybrid half-day event, technology and business leaders from the likes of BT, Ericsson, Fujitsu, Nokia, NTT, Orange, Red Hat and Sony will discuss their current work, future plans and ultimate goals to transform the optical and wireless network technology space.

Event highlights: Attendees will have the opportunity to:

• Hear from senior executives about the Forum’s areas of focus, achievements, and future ambitions.
• Find out about the findings of a new market landscape study from Omdia assessing market readiness, positioning, and adoption barriers for all-photonics and hybrid photonics networks.
• Attend panel discussions about driving energy efficiency and sustainability, and the role of tomorrow’s network infrastructure in helping to futureproof multiple industries.
• Be in the know on the latest early adoption use cases in financial services, remote media production, green computing in remote GPU, and more.
• Check out exhibits that showcase and explain the work of the Forum’s members.
• Forge connections with business leaders, engineers, and academics from across the technology and wider industry sectors.

Special guests: Ian Redpath, Research Director, Transport Networks and Components from technology analyst and advisory leader Omdia; and Mats Granryd, Chairman of Business Sweden and former Director General of the GSMA.

Demos: There will also be a range of prototypes and exhibits from Forum members to bring their work to life including:

• Anritsu: solution for visualizing and monitoring network quality and latency in a cloud environment.
• Kioxia: prototype broadband SSD with an optical interface by combining its latest data center and enterprise NVMe SSDs and optical-electrical bridge.
• Nokia: exhibits showing innovative coherent point-to-multi-point XR optics technology to reduce energy consumption; and to demonstrate quantum-safe networking and digital twin security.
• NTT: demos showing advancements in Data-Centric Infrastructure (DCI) for a “location-free” solution for wide-area distributed data centers; and an optical wavelength path provisioning technology based on IOWN All-Photonics Network (APN) architecture for time-saving data center exchange services.
• Pegatron: a static demonstration of TIP OOPT 400G DCI Muxponder.
• Sumitomo Electric: remote control and 30 km transmission using a SFP28 APN-Transceiver demonstrating innovative architecture to apply APN practically to mobile fronthaul.

The IOWN Global Forum believes developing global networks is critical for maximizing innovation, democratizing access to products and services across diverse industries, and fostering business and economic growth. But achieving more sustainable and high-performance network and computing infrastructure requires a genuinely worldwide and open collaborative effort across the entire technology ecosystem.

Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, President and Chairperson of the IOWN Global Forum, commented: “The IOWN Global Forum’s photonics-based technologies will deliver a world of new use cases that will transform our daily lives. From the way we access our finances, to the way we watch sporting and entertainment events. Through the innovation, we can achieve data transfer speeds faster than ever imagined, ensure greater resiliency against business disruption, and help meet environmental challenges posed by exponential AI demand. The Forum is building a community of like-minded members to lead this revolution for a more sustainable and equitable world, powered by light, and invites more organizations from industries across the globe to join our mission.”

Key event details:

Date: Thursday, 24 April 2025

Time: 2:00PM – 5:00PM CEST, followed by a networking reception

Location: Hilton Stockholm Slussen Hotel, Guldgränd 8, Box 15270, Stockholm, 10465, Sweden (there will also be a live online broadcast via Webex)

Key URLs: Event Overview and Registration Page

Ends

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 150 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.