The event is designed to “showcases capabilities of metaverse-ready network for consumer engagement”
On Monday, Singtel held its first metaverse event at the Singtel Comcentre in Singapore in partnership with SK Telecom, called Destination: ifland..
About 130 individuals, all winners of a contest that ran on Singtel’s Facebook and Instagram channels in December, took part in the showcase. They created avatars before entering the Singtel x ifland room where they met American singer-songwriter, Alec Benjamin, and had the option hanging out together in particpants’ own ‘rooms’.
This is the first public outcome the MoU the two operators signed December in which they agreed to work jointly on the metaverse. Singtel will provide 5G and other technology access to the metaverse initiative.
SK Telecom’s growth strategy
SK Telecom announced its strategy for global growth, in part via its ifland metaverse platform, in February 2022. It signed up Deutsche Telekom as its partner in Europe in May 2022 – the two have a long history of collaboration on technology.
In November 2022, SK Telecom launched the ifland platform in another 49 countries and now has at least some coverage in every region – Asia, the America, Europe, the Middle East and Africa, although at the moment, it is only available in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.
This surpasses the progress of Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, which put the metaverse at the centre of its growth strategy in October 2021. It has not been a notable success so far: in the first nine months of 2022, the besieged Meta lost a cool $9.4 billion on its metaverse subsidiary, Reality Labs, and has only launched its Horizon Worlds in seven countries.
Ifland is only available in English, Chinese, Japanese and Korean, but SKT plans to work with local partners on content relevant to each market. SK Telecom also intends to leverage k-pop to promote and boost the adoption of ifland, with a live k-pop concert every week, as well as putting on auditions for future stars and hosting virtual meetings with the stars and wannabes.
Will anyone use it?
SKT claims to have acquired a total of 12.8 million users of ifland since its launch in July 2021 although those figures do not give any indication of the degree of engagement and frequency of visits, usually expressed as monthly active users MAUs). However, MAUs are not made public by SK Telecom.
According to the Wall Street Journal report (paywall), Meta is believed to have set a target of 500,000 MAUs by the end of 2022, but that was reset to 280,000.
Internet as creator economy
On a more upbeat note, Anna Yip, CEO, Consumer Singapore, Singtel, commented, “The evolution of the internet is shifting towards a creator economy and immersive virtual worlds. This requires an ultra-low latency network with high-speed connectivity and higher bandwidth to enable the creation and delivery of an enhanced metaverse experience involving multiple users and augmented or virtual reality devices.”
She added, “In keeping with our focus of delivering unique and meaningful digital experiences to our customers, we’ll be working with our partners to develop and deliver more such use cases that demonstrate the capabilities of our metaverse-ready network.”
Destination: ifland is the first instalment in The Meta Guide, a series of metaverse-themed events Singtel plans to develop with SKT, to introduce new platforms and experiences in the metaverse for consumers to explore. More details anon.
Ifland’s availability
Ifland is now available in Argentina, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Brazil, Cambodia, Canada, Chile, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, Lebanon, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Myanmar, New Zealand, Norway, Palau, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Rwanda, Singapore, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates, the UK, the US, Tunisia, Turkey and Vietnam.