IOWN Global Forum’s 2025 Annual Member Meeting in Sweden Marked New Milestones

Members from industry-leading organizations met to advance their mission to revolutionize lives through technology

STOCKHOLM--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The 2025 Annual Member Meeting of the Innovative Optical and Wireless Network Global Forum (IOWN Global Forum) recognized its progress and shared its latest plans to deliver the networks of the future.

More than 250 delegates across its now 160+ member organizations assembled in Stockholm for a series of meetings, workshops, and networking events to discuss and advance their activities towards the Forum’s Vision 2030 Roadmap, five years on from its foundation. This year, the IOWN Global Forum was also joined by a number of special guests to provide a wider political and industry context to its groundbreaking work.

In his keynote address at the opening plenary, Håkan Jevrell, Sweden’s State Secretary to Minister for International Development Cooperation and Foreign Trade, discussed how as next-generation technologies evolve, geopolitical uncertainty persists, and industries face new challenges, developing systems and solutions that future-proof businesses and enable them to remain competitive is becoming increasingly vital.

FUTURES Stockholm

Highlights of the Forum’s public event, FUTURES Stockholm, which showcases the mission and achievements of the IOWN Global Forum to external audiences, included:

• A presentation by Omdia’s Ian Redpath on a new whitepaper on the future of the digital economy, powered by All-Photonics Networks.

• An energy efficiency panel discussion, led by Nokia’s Lieven Levrau, with Red Hat’s Hidetsugu Sugiyama and Orange’s Eric Hardouin as panelists, discussing the Forum’s work to create a sustainable and high-performance compute and network infrastructure.

• A wider industry business panel moderated by Reuters' Supantha Mukherjee, with a line-up of Business Sweden’s Mats Granryd, Ericsson’s Stephane Lessard, Accenture’s Jefferson Wang, and Sony’s Katsutoshi Itoh, on how advanced network infrastructure will help future-proof diverse sectors.

Looking ahead to the next five years

Dr. Katsuhiko Kawazoe, President and Chairperson of the IOWN Global Forum, commented: “Five years on since we founded the IOWN Global Forum, our membership is growing with momentum and at pace as more leading global companies from the technology and vertical sectors join our journey. We are fast broadening our use cases to develop innovation opportunities across industries, moving from Proof of Concept, to Proof of Value, to Proof of Business. In other words, what these technologies truly mean in terms of exciting commercial opportunities as well as enhanced customer experiences.

“As we move ahead in the next five years from development to implementation, and explore new territories including quantum innovation, we are fully focused on driving market success for the IOWN Global Forum technologies. Continuing our mission to deliver a smart, sustainable, and secure world for all.”

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 160 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.