Innovation Beyond Limits – IOWN –
- Date
- 2026.10.06
- Time
- 10:35 - 11:00
- Location
- Knowledge Capital Congrès Convention Center
It has now been six years since NTT first introduced its vision for IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network). Today, the IOWN Global Forum has grown to more than 170 members, while the All-Photonics Network (APN) has already entered commercial deployment, enabling a wide range of use cases and real-world implementations.
In particular, technologies capable of reducing power consumption to one-eighth of conventional levels were deployed in a commercial environment at Expo 2025 Osaka, Kansai, Japan as part of IOWN 2.0, successfully demonstrating their effectiveness.
This session will look back on the achievements made to date and explore the future evolution of IOWN, highlighting its new value propositions and the transformative impact it is expected to have on society and industry as a whole.
Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe
NTT, Inc.
- Biography
Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe is Chief Executive Fellow of NTT, Inc.
After joining NTT in 1987, he had been engaged in R&D of radio and satellite communication systems. His specialized field of research was highly efficient data transmission schemes for integrated-media systems. He became the head of NTT Service Evolution Laboratories and the head of NTT Service Innovation Laboratory Group in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Since 2018, he had served as a senior vice president and the head of Research and Development Planning. He was also appointed as Director of the board of NTT Research Inc. He became an executive vice president in 2020, a senior executive vice president in 2022, and
a chief executive fellow in 2025.Prior to that, he served as President of ITE (The Institute of Image Information and Television Engineers) from 2018 to 2019 and as President of IEICE (The Institute of Electronics, Information and Communications Engineers) from 2022 to 2023. He has been the President and Chairperson of the IOWN Global Forum since 2020.
He received the TTC (The Telecommunication Technology Committee) Information and Communication Technology Award in 2019. He received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in engineering from Waseda University, Tokyo, in 1985 and 1987, respectively. He also received his Ph. D. in Informatics from Kyoto University, Kyoto in 2009.
- Panel Session
- Innovation Beyond Limits – IOWN –