The NTT Pavilion: Experiencing the Future of Communications at the Osaka-Kansai Expo
Among the many forward-looking pavilions at the Osaka-Kansai Expo, the NTT Pavilion stood out for the immediacy and ambition of what it put in front of visitors. Themed "PARALLEL TRAVEL — A Pavilion That Travels Through Time and Space," the exhibition showcased NTT's next-generation communications platform IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) alongside spatial transmission technology that merges video, audio, and haptic feedback in real time.
The experience went well beyond a passive display. A special performance by world-renowned techno-pop unit Perfume was reconstructed in 3D using real-time transmission from a distant studio — with spatial vibrations, footstep impacts, and stage lighting all arriving at the pavilion simultaneously with the video feed. The technology made visible what the next era of communication could feel like: not just watching a performance, but inhabiting the same space as one.
This article documents the pavilion across all three of its zones, examines the technical innovation on display, and considers the business implications of NTT's vision for communications infrastructure going forward.
- The NTT Pavilion's design and core innovations
- The experience zones: future communications, spatial video, and "Another Me"
- The business impact and strategic implications of NTT's communications vision
- Summary
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The NTT Pavilion's Design and Core Innovations
The NTT Pavilion was designed as more than an exhibition — it was conceived as a working demonstration space for communications technology that currently exists nowhere else. The concept, "PARALLEL TRAVEL," reflects an aspiration: to let people experience connection across distances in a way that feels physically present, not merely digital.
The pavilion is organized into three zones. Zone 1, titled "Prologue," traces the history of communications — from letters and traditional telephony to smartphones and beyond — using immersive video, audio, and tactile feedback. This is the historical grounding that puts everything in Zone 2 into context.
Zone 2 is where the core technology is demonstrated. NTT's spatial transmission technology allows multiple people in different physical locations to share video, audio, and haptic sensations in real time. The showpiece: a live 3D reconstruction of a Perfume performance recorded at a studio in Tokyo. Every aspect of the performance — the spatial vibrations, footstep sounds, lighting shifts — was transmitted and reproduced in real time at the expo venue. The result was a sensation that everyone in the room described in roughly the same terms: this feels like being in the room with the performance.
The Perfume footage used was from a live recording conducted on April 2, and the pavilion reproduced it in real time 3D so visitors experienced it as though it were happening at that moment. The precision of the transmission — the accuracy of the vibration data, the synchronization between motion and sound — made the technology tangible rather than theoretical.
A practical note about Zone 1: chairs are placed in the initial room for visitors to wait. However, sitting down there delays entry into the main exhibit flow and reduces sightline access to Zone 2. Standing is recommended if you want to secure a front-row position.
The next-generation communications infrastructure underlying all of this is IOWN. By routing data processing through optical rather than electrical signals, IOWN achieves high-speed, high-volume data transmission that electrical systems cannot match — enabling the kind of real-time spatial transmission demonstrated in Zone 2. This is not a speculative technology. The pavilion showed it working.
NTT's presentation made the case clearly: IOWN isn't just a faster network. It's a different kind of network, capable of enabling communication forms that couldn't previously exist. The pavilion crystallized that argument through direct experience.
The Experience Zones: Future Communications, Spatial Video, and "Another Me"
Zone 3 introduced a different kind of encounter: a digital mirror experience in which each visitor's photograph was taken and reproduced as a virtual presence — an "Another Me" — displayed alongside others in a shared digital space. The moment of meeting a digital version of yourself, rendered in real time and placed in context with others, prompted the kind of reflection that the pavilion seemed designed to produce: what does personal identity look like when it can exist simultaneously in physical and digital space?
The multi-sensory integration throughout the experience zones carries implications well beyond entertainment. The fusion of haptics, spatial audio, and high-fidelity video into a seamless real-time system opens possibilities across remote work, telemedicine, and distance education. When a physical sensation can be transmitted alongside a visual signal — when a doctor in one city can feel the texture of what's in front of a colleague in another — the nature of those professional interactions changes fundamentally.
NTT's spatial transmission technology also demonstrated an important point about IOWN's scale of impact: it's not just about speed. It's about the new kinds of communication that become possible when the transmission infrastructure is no longer a limiting factor. The experience of standing in the pavilion while a performance unfolded in 3D around you was evidence that the limitation had been removed.
From an enterprise perspective, the potential applications are numerous. Real-time 3D transmission for international business meetings. Product launches that incorporate live performance elements. Training environments that include physical feedback. Each of these is technically achievable with the infrastructure NTT demonstrated at the pavilion.
The technology also serves as a live argument for IOWN's strategic positioning. What NTT showcased is not incremental improvement — it's a fundamentally different capability set, built on a generation of optical communications R&D that the pavilion's historical exhibits made visible.
The Business Impact and Strategic Implications of NTT's Communications Vision
The NTT Pavilion presented a vision for communications infrastructure with implications that extend across industries. The combination of IOWN's optical processing capability and spatial transmission technology points toward a future where distance as a constraint in professional communication is effectively removed.
For enterprise applications, the implications are immediate. The spatial transmission system demonstrated at the pavilion could be applied to remote meetings, international presentations, large-scale events, and any context where physical presence currently provides an advantage that digital communication cannot replicate. When video, audio, and haptic information can all be transmitted simultaneously and in real time, the gap between physical and remote presence narrows significantly.
The entertainment applications demonstrated by the Perfume performance offer a window into how this technology might transform event marketing and brand experience. A product launch that incorporates a live 3D performance, transmitted in real time to venues around the world simultaneously, is now technically feasible. The brand value implications of delivering that kind of experience — one that couldn't have been created any other way — are significant.
From a strategic infrastructure standpoint, IOWN's power efficiency improvement is equally important. NTT aims to reduce power consumption in ICT infrastructure to 1/100 of current levels by the 2030s. As AI and data center energy consumption become increasingly significant environmental and cost concerns for enterprises and governments, this kind of infrastructure improvement isn't just an engineering achievement — it's a strategic business advantage.
NTT's representative at the pavilion, Yoshikawa, emphasized the company's positioning as not just a communications carrier but an innovation leader helping to create the environment in which future business operates. The vision includes extending the "sense of presence" experience to any physical distance — including, in the longer term, to communication with humans in space. The ambition is serious, and the pavilion provided enough demonstrable evidence to make it credible.
The IOWN initiative also creates space for enterprise collaboration. As NTT's platform develops, companies that integrate it into their communications infrastructure early will have first-mover advantages in the capabilities it enables. The pavilion's technology demonstrations provided a practical preview of what those capabilities look like.
Summary
The NTT Pavilion at the Osaka-Kansai Expo 2025 was one of the exhibition's most technically substantive experiences — delivering not a concept or a forecast, but a working demonstration of communications technology that changes what is possible.
The combination of IOWN's optical infrastructure and spatial transmission enabled a real-time 3D experience that made the gap between physical and remote presence feel genuinely closable. The Perfume performance reconstruction showed the technology working under real conditions. Zone 3's "Another Me" experience raised questions about digital identity that will become increasingly relevant as this infrastructure matures.
For business professionals, the pavilion offered an early look at a communications platform with major implications for enterprise operations, event marketing, remote collaboration, and ICT infrastructure investment. The convergence of technological capability and strategic investment NTT has assembled is worth watching closely.
Reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZbkvPk1FV8
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