As most parts of the world prepare to welcome 5G, behemoth Chinese corporation Huawei has shared that the current telecom infrastructure is not at the level it needs to be in perfecting the metaverse, an online space that’s tipped to become the next iteration of the internet.
Huawei’s Middle East region’s chief expert on business and strategy consulting, Abhinav Purohit who published a three-part blog series on December 20 made the comments whilst addressing the role of telecom companies in the metaverse.
Purohit wrote that the “metaverse is a collective virtual shared space” that’ll “allow geographically distant participants to enjoy realistic, spatially-aware experiences that seamlessly blend virtual content in a user’s physical world.”
Adding that the concept of an open metaverse is closely tied to the Web3 movement, as inbuilt economies will be enabled by “digital currencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs).”
Before the metaverse can be perfected, Purohit believes that download speeds, streaming quality, mobile devices, and metaverse hardware — among other things — will need to be improved rapidly to give users a smooth virtual experience.
Purohit adds that “Delivering such an experience will require innovations in fields like hybrid local and remote real-time rendering, video compression, edge computing, and cross-layer visibility.”
He also adds that network providers will need to change their cellular network standards and optimizations to improve the latency between devices and mobile networks.
Adding that one of the key issues that are holding back the metaverse is latency (network’s responsiveness), symmetric bandwidth (speed of data transfers), and overall quality of experience.
Purohit says that the large-scale adoption of “5G networks will dramatically improve bandwidth while reducing network contention and latency, while 6G will increase speeds by yet another order of magnitude.”
And while it hasn’t become available in most parts of the world, 5G has a staggering speed of 1,000 megabytes per second (MBps), making it much faster that the average U.S. internet speed of 119.03 MBps.
According to data from the Global mobile Suppliers Association (GSA), over 500 operators in more than 150 countries and territories were investing in 5G since August. The data also shows that 222 of these operators are already running 5G mobile services in 89 countries and territories.
Isa Muhammad is a writer and video game journalist covering many aspects of entertainment media including the film industry. He's steadily writing his way to the sharp end of journalism and enjoys staying informed. If he's not reading, playing video games or catching up on his favourite TV series, then he's probably writing about them.
