Chunghwa Telecom and NTT activate world’s first International IOWN APN

As part of its rapidly evolving Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) project, NTT has activated the IOWN all-photonics network (APN) between Taiwan and Japan it created with Chunghwa Telecom, boasting approximately 17ms latency, no jitter and stable communication with a near 3,000km one-way network.

Spearheaded by comms and IT giant NTT – and supported by Sony, Intel, Nvidia, Microsoft and other leading technology firms – IOWN was created to meet the growing needs of the hyper-connected business world of the future, offering a future global communications infrastructure capable of enabling ultra-high-speed, high-capacity internet services utilising photonics-based technologies.

It aims to address the almost exponentially rising demand for data and a commensurate rise in energy consumption due to the vast amounts of compute power required by future applications, in particular artificial intelligence (AI) and large language model (LLM) use cases. This network and information processing infrastructure includes terminals that can provide high-speed, high-capacity communication using technology focused on optics, as well as large computational resources.

NTT’s IOWN APN infrastructure is designed to enable high-capacity, low-latency and low power consumption communications through end-to-end optical connections without converting optical signals into electrical signals.

The new APN is the product of an agreement signed between the two parties in October 2023 and is said to be based on Chunghwa Telecom and NTT’s strengths in optical and wireless transmission technologies, as well as both companies’ achievements in implementing these technologies. It links the Chunghwa Telecom headquarters in Taipei City and NTT’s Musashino R&D Centre in Japan.

The International IOWN APN connects Taiwan and Japan with 100Gbps bandwidth of optical path, with 33.84ms round-trip time. The network architecture and equipment of the International IOWN APN supports OAA, Open All-Photonic Network Functional Architecture, which is published by the IOWN Global Forum (IOWN GF), a consortium of IOWN ecosystem partners. 

To launch the International IOWN APN, Chunghwa Telecom connected its headquarters to a landing station in Japan via another landing station in Taiwan, and NTT connected between the NTT Musashino R&D Centre and a landing station in Japan. Then, both Chunghwa Telecom and NTT connected with each other.

With the link established, the companies plan to apply the International IOWN APN in a number of use cases, initially to demonstrate low-latency interactive immersive entertainment at the forthcoming NTT R&D Forum 2024. NTT will provide data backup and replication services for disaster countermeasures to realise smart factory and LLMs, such as Tsuzumi, mainly for semiconductor and other manufacturing industries in Taiwan and Japan.

Akira Shimada, president and CEO of NTT Corporation, said: “With outstanding technology and extensive global business experience, we expect that NTT and Chunghwa Telecom working together on IOWN’s international communications will strongly accelerate IOWN’s technology development and service deployment. Based on the achievements of NTT and Chunghwa Telecom, we hope to expand IOWN in various other countries.”

Chunghwa Telecom’s chairman and CEO, Shui-Yi Kuo, added: “Chunghwa Telecom agrees with the vision of IOWN’s innovative technologies and will continue to uphold the brand spirit of Always Amazing Ahead and implement the corporate sustainability goals of ESG energy conservation, actively invest in innovative research and development, and bring people more diversified and convenient network services.”