What a big surprise given Facebook instigated TIP and the metaverse is Meta’s schtick
The Telecom Infra Project (TIP)has formed a new project group to address “one of the central topics in today’s telecommunications industry, metaverse-ready networks”. Oh.
“The TIP Metaverse-Ready Networks Project Group’s primary objective is to accelerate the development of solutions and architectures that improve network readiness to support metaverse experiences,” apparently.
The project is being kicked off by co-chairs from Meta Platforms (that’s Facebook, in old money, which some think seized on the notion of metaverse to distract the market from troubles such as losing ground to YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat, myriad accusations of enabling all kinds of terrible, damaging behaviour and allegations of unlawfully collecting and exploiting users’ data…), Microsoft, T-Mobile US, Telefónica and Sparkle.
Alex Harmand, Head of Network Platforms at Telefónica and a co-chair, said: “This new group will enable operators to address the exciting opportunities that the metaverse is creating in both the consumer and enterprise segments. Telefónica is looking forward to collaborating to define the network capabilities and associated APIs needed to enhance metaverse services.
“The TIP community is the perfect environment for this initiative as it will allow us to leverage multiple current project groups, such as OpenWIFI, OpenRAN, Open Optical and Packet Transport, to deliver end-to-end architectures and solutions that we will then test in Telefónica’s and other TIP Community Labs.”
Pioneering the metaverse
Telefónica is striving to position itself as a metaverse pioneer and held a Metaverse Day on 29 September to share “its innovations, strategy and partnerships around metaverse, Web3 and other emerging technologies”. In his typical grandiose style, the operator’s President, José María Álvarez‑Pallete stated, “We are not in an era of change. We are in a change of era”.
Chema Alonso, Telefónica’s Chief Digital Officer, talked up the operator’s strategic investment in the Bit2Me exchanger that allows the use of cryptocurrencies for certain transactions and projects like Movistar Tokens which reward customers “for being more digital”.
He also highlighted the Telefónica Marketplace, a new platform for the creation, hosting and sale of digital art. Alonso also highlighted Telefónica’s commitment to innovation with investment and resources poured into start-ups through Wayra (which, by the way, means wind in the Latin American Quechua language).
Living in a fantasy?
I recently interviewed with James Shannon, CEO and Founder of XONE, which Shannon describes as: a mixed reality social platform that makes it easy to build, share, and interact inside virtual worlds. Our mission is to build a bridge into the metaverse using familiar social media interfaces and immersive environments to onboard the next 100 million creators into Web 3.0.”
I asked how he saw the role of telcos playing out in the metaverse, given that various value-adds beyond basic connectivity have been mooted (this free TM Forum report sets them out really well, even if I do say so myself), such as cryptocurrencies and supporting transactions, managing digital IDs so that people – and in some instances their purchases or assets – can move between metaverses, and so on.
So how does he view the telcos’ role and his potential relationships with them? “Unless there’s a telco that adopts a wallet in a very significant way and can have that wallet integrated across all different types of platforms to us, it’s really just infrastructure, we will build on top of them.”
The more likely scenario
To our way of thinking, Irene Bernal’s session was rather nearer the mark of where most operators are more likely to play in the metaverse – assuming it comes to pass before we get bored with it and move onto something else. Bernal is Director of Connectivity Innovation at Telefónica, and she showed “experiences” – a word I am coming to truly detest but on the upside at least it seems to have displaced agile – that are being developed for the metaverse.
She summed up the pillars of telco preparedness for the metaverse as: low latency technologies, edge computing and a programmable network – which sounds like how we were talking about 5G five years ago. But apparently this time it’s different because she said the metaverse is also “virtual, immersive, interactive, massive, real-time environment” which is also stuff said about 5G way back.
But to demonstrate the order of magnitude step change, she pointed out that to provide the various alternative reality (XR) experiences in real time at today’s network speeds it would take 300 years to download the Microsoft Flight Simulator (2.5PB of data). Telefónica expects data traffic will increase by 20 times in the next 10 years, requiring 1,000 times the current computing power at the world’s disposal.
Over-excited, again?
So, aside from such an increase blowing all greenwashing claims out of the water, here’s the thing. 5G, and especially Standalone, was what operators, governments and regional bodies like the European Union got super excited about.
It was essential to our economies and competitiveness and there is much hopping up and down about Europe lagging behind in 5G deployment and the impending economic damage as a result. Yet China has spent untold billions on it, but China’s economy is hardly prospering as Xi Jinping’s begins an unprecedented third term in power. Turns out trade wars and disrupted supply chains trump tech.
By now we were supposed to have [insert the number of mega-billions of your choice here] IoT devices and automated cars all over the place. These things have not come to pass. Ericsson’s Mobility Report 2022 predicted that global Standalone deployments would double, to reach only 40 in total, by the end of this year.
Shiny, shiny
Like 5G, the metaverse feels like it’s all about pushing new technologies for the sake of shiny new technologies, which necessitates inventing compelling reasons why we need them. It’s also weird that operators are among the metaverse’s proponents – maybe they are desperate to prove to shareholders that there on it – at the same time as complaining about the levels of traffic generated by a few big techcos and demanding those companies make a fair contribution to the cost of carrying traffic. It’s a bit like working the bellows and complaining about the fire becoming more intense.
Clearly as critical infrastructure that underpins just about every other industry, as well as having a massive economic and social input blue-sky research and looking to the future is crucial. It shouldn’t be at the expense of getting seriously basic stuff sorted now, though.
Last week on the edge of an English city I could only get a poor, 3G signal, a not uncommon situation up and down the country, which does not tally with operators’ claims about their networks’ coverage.
And for all the chat about experience, the UK regulator, Ofcom, has just published its league table of complaints from customers about broadband, landline, mobile and pay-TV services, which overall have remained stable since the previous report – also known as little or no improvement.