NTT Docomo has launched an all-photonic network (APN) service in Hong Kong.

The APN InterLink was launched by the Japanese operator with its Hong Kong-based subsidiary, NTT Com Asia, targeting low-latency needs for financial institutions in the region.

The service establishes an interconnection between NTT Com Asia’s Financial Data Center, located near the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (HKEX), and NTT’s Tai Po Data Center, with both linked via Docomo's APN DCLink, which allows APN-to-data center connectivity.

NTT claimed its APN DedicatedLink, which enables connections between various kinds of locations, facilitates real-time operations across distributed environments, allowing customers to connect their sites to the two points for direct and high-speed HKEX access.

To bolster Tokyo-Hong Kong financial connections in future, the two entities plan to expand APN on the Asia Submarine-cable Express (ASE) using mainline NTT's all-photonics IOWN APN service. The solution is named after the NTT-led Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) Global Forum, which aims to address both growing capacity and rising power consumption

The ultra-low-latency, photonics-driven offering was posited as aiding high-frequency and algorithmic trading, proximity-based market data access, and real-time transaction processing, all of which are traditionally latency heavy.

NTT - which is targeting commercial use of IOWN APN in 2030 - conducted tests last year using IOWN connections between data centers in the U.K. and U.S., claiming a latency of less than one millisecond between facilities almost 90km apart. It has also worked with Red Hat, Nvidia and Fujitsu to improve real-time AI data analysis at the network edge.

The Hong Kong initiative follows NTT Corporation’s more recent work with NEC on the SpectralWave WX-T transponder, which serves as an endpoint for end-to-end optical paths in the IOWN APN.