Telecom companies need 5G on steroids for the metaverse

Attendees at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona were transported into the metaverse and could either ride on SK Telecom’s display that featured a giant swooping robot arm while wearing Virtual Reality (VR) headsets, or at the Orange stand they could even travel virtually to Paris to see the Notre Dame cathedral.

Telecom companies are turning their attention to the metaverse, an immersive virtual world that is yet to fully exist but is seen by some as the future of how we will work, socialise and connect. However, how their technology will work with the metaverse and how it will be regulated are questions that are still unanswered.

“Telcos will be the entry point for the metaverse, the entry point because of connectivity, but also because of customer relations, the customer wants access to a digital world,” Michaël Trabbia, chief technology and innovation officer at Orange told Euronews Next.

5G is not enough

You're talking about seamlessly blending the physical world with the virtual world. And that in itself is going to take more than 5G.
 - Cathy Hackl , Futures Intelligence Group
In fact, 5G will not be enough to support the metaverse, said Cathy Hackl, who is known as the “Godmother of the metaverse” and is the chief metaverse officer at the Futures Intelligence Group.
“When you're talking about the metaverse and telcos, you're talking about multiple, I mean, millions of billions of devices together looking at content in virtual spaces in the physical world,” she told Euronews Next.
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