Japan’s Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. (NTT) said it will start providing its first services under an optical technology-based next-generation network initiative to its corporate clients.  The major Japanese telecommunications company plans to start offering the services from March 16 for a monthly fee of 1.98 million yen through its regional arms Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corp. and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone West Corp.

NTT rival telco KDDI Corp. will also take part in the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) initiative which was first announced by NTT in 2019.  It’s goal is to reduce electricity consumption (power) and achieve high-capacity communication by converting electric signals into optical ones to cope with surging network traffic. It will join the IOWN Global Forum, comprising over 100 members including NTT and many information technology companies in and outside Japan.  Founding IOWN members are NTT, Sony and Intel. The forum will be discussing technical specifications for optical and wireless networks with a view to developing an international standard for 6G communications.

Source:  IOWN Global Forum

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The two Japanese rival firms will work together to make IOWN a 6G platform, pundits said.  That’s amazing as all previous IMT standards (3G, 4G, 5G) were developed by 3GPP and then ITU-R WP 5D.

At a news conference, NTT Senior Executive Vice President Katsuhiko Kawazoe said: “We hope [IOWN] will help resolve social issues and create new value.”

NTT plans to announce the second round of IOWN services as early as 2025.

References:

https://www.nippon.com/en/news/yjj2023030200965/

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2023/03/03/business/ntt-6g-network/

https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2023/03/03/ntts-regional-units-to-offer-corporate-users-next-gen-services-under-iown-initiative/

https://iowngf.org/