The social environment is changing rapidly, and with these changes, society is coming to have great expectations for the future network. NTT is researching and developing technologies for achieving a flexible and smart network as a new social infrastructure that will be able to meet a wide variety of needs. This article describes the direction of research and development at NTT with an eye to 2020 and beyond centered on the three pillars of 5G/IoT (fifth-generation mobile communications/Internet of Things), Network-AI (NTT's artificial intelligence applied to networks), and open source software, while providing an overview of activities done in collaboration with NTT Group companies.