Infrastructure Development Initiatives for Massive AI Utilizing IOWN Approved at the CxO Roundtable Meeting of ITU-T
-Growing Expectations that IOWN and AI Constellations will Meet Global Sustainability Challenges Using Massive AI-

News Highlights:

1. Background

In recent years, remarkable advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have made it clear that issues around training costs and the large energy consumption of large language models (LLMs) need to be addressed. It is in response to these issues that NTT is proposing implementation of ICT infrastructure employing distributed processing between suburban data centers and AI constellations, etc., and is also working on R&D and proof-of-concept for such implementations*4.
　In addition to these activities, international standardization is a necessary step towards the deployment of ICT infrastructure around the world. NTT is working on both de facto standardization under the IOWN Global Forum*5, etc. and de jure standardization under ITU*6, IEC, ISO etc.

2. ITU-T CxO Roundtable

The CxO Roundtable meeting, hosted by the director of ITU-T, was held on 9th December, 2024, in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, and NTT have attended the meeting both this year and last. In this meeting, senior executives (CxOs) for telecommunication industries and ITU-T sat down together. The goal of this meeting was to specify priorities for various issues to be discussed as well as for the main areas for work relating to ITU-T standards.

3. Agreements in This Meeting

NTT set out the growing need for distributed ICT platforms that work flexibly and optimally while achieving extreme levels of performance (in terms of high-speed, low-latency and energy-efficiency) as a foundation for AI/LLMs, which have rapidly expanded in size recently, and proposed that it is important to develop and revise ITU-T standards that will contribute to the implementation of ICT platforms that can cater for such massive AI. The attendees, i.e., senior executives of telecom carriers, vendors, public organizations etc., accepted the proposal.

4. Outlook

Following the result of this meeting, NTT will work on de jure standardization under ITU-T, in particular, for technical specifications of international connections, and will accelerate R&D relating to ICT infrastructure with APN and DCI - standards for which are currently under discussion in the IOWN Global Forum - and technologies relating to AI constellations.

Attendees of the CxO Roundtable Meeting

[Glossary]

^*1CxO Roundtable: A meeting where senior executives of sector members meet together, hosted by the directors of ITU-T, Mr. Seizo Onoe from Japan.

^*2AI Constellation: https://group.ntt/en/newsrelease/2024/10/17/241017a.html

^*3https://www.itu.int/en/ITU-T/tsbdir/cto/Documents/Communique_ITU_CxO_2024.pdf

^*4https://group.ntt/jp/newsrelease/2024/02/20/240220a.html

^*5For the latest activities of the IOWN Global Forum, see https://journal.ntt.co.jp/article/24185

^*6ITU: International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations, for information and communication technologies (ICTs). ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and information communication technology.

About NTT

NTT contributes to a sustainable society through the power of innovation. We are a leading global technology company providing services to consumers and businesses as a mobile operator, infrastructure, networks, applications, and consulting provider. Our offerings include digital business consulting, managed application services, workplace and cloud solutions, data center and edge computing, all supported by our deep global industry expertise. We are over $97B in revenue and 330,000 employees, with $3.6B in annual R&D investments. Our operations span across 80+ countries and regions, allowing us to serve clients in over 190 of them. We serve over 75% of Fortune Global 100 companies, thousands of other enterprise and government clients and millions of consumers.