The plan to make all networks optical is about to take two big steps forward

In December 2024, Japanese tech giant NTT revealed two impressive feats of high-speed networking.

Working with Hitachi Vantara, the company virtualized a pair of storage arrays into a single logical unit that achieved real-time data synchronization. That's a neat trick in the datacenter, but NTT and Hitachi pulled it off despite the two arrays being in different facilities separated by 600 km – the kind of distance that creates lots of latency and makes real-time transfers impossible.

Later in the month, NTT detailed its efforts to shift data at an astounding 455 terabits per second across 1,000 km using ordinary optic fibers.

The common denominator in both tests was technology called "Innovative Optical and Wireless Network" (IOWN), an all-optical networking stack that NTT hopes will mature in 2030 and expects will reduce power consumption by 100x, improve transmission capacity by 125x, and reduce network latency to 0.5 percent ...