Will Big Tech chip in for the cost of the journey?
By 2030 roughly $2 trillion will have been spent on the Metaverse, Analysys Mason revealed at its annual telecom summit this week. Much of it will be capital expenditure on 6G technology research and cloud computing. But with the ‘3D Internet’ representing such a vast universe how many of those trillions of Euros will be wasted on expeditions that go nowhere?
The metaverse is tied to 6G, said Robert Clark in The Light Reading. So any research will have useful spin offs for 5G, by telling researchers from Ericsson and Nokia how to use the spectrum more efficiency and unveil new ways of fine tuning faster response times. Aim for cyberspace and you will advance in hyperscale.
The metaverse is inextricable from 6G, principal analyst Martin Scott said. So ‘metaverse’ will be the magic word that gets you a meeting with a venture capitalist. The Metaverse will be the major driver of 6G network architecture evolution and investment, said Clark. Before we reach that destination, we might want to get off and enjoy the benefits of 5G, which still haven’t come to fruition yet.
“Stakeholders and investors are making their plans,” said Scott. “Money is flowing, and new developments are underway to support these new user experiences. But they will have to wait for the new network to happen if they are to come to fruition.”
The ‘tepid performance of 5G’ means that many of its over-promised improvements, bountiful network potential, a rainbow of revenue streams and unimaginable user experiences, have yet to emerge. Quelle surprise! It would be hard to live up to that billing. Perhaps when 6G is disappointing people, 5G can quietly make its deliveries. “Since the start of 5G we’ve argued the buildout can only be justified if operators expand into significant new markets and revenue streams. Most of the 5G vision has not really transpired, ” said Caroline Gabriel, an Analysys Mason research director. “If operators don’t start to put the foundations of that vision in place now, the rapid evolution of user requirements will outrun 5G development, making the 5G generation potentially redundant.”
Those expecting remote surgery by robotic doctors have been disappointed that 5G has been business-as-usual mobile broadband for most operators, Gabriel said. The short-termism of this is now being seen around the world, she adds, citing the declining average revenue per user (ARPU) of Korean operators after just two years of growth. If operators don’t start building the underlying pieces of 6G, it’s possible the next generation could be developed separately from the 5G ecosystem, and be primarily driven by cloud and Internet communities, Gabriel warned.
There is still time for telcos to grab the ‘bull’ by the horns and build systems that ensure the 6G business models become the natural successors to what they put in place today. This would leave them with ‘a central role in the chain’, said Gabriel. Meanwhile telcos are approaching 6G through two different paths. One is the incremental route in steadily building out capabilities such as low latency, edge and slicing for industrial clients. The other is the consumer-focused, mobile broadband-centric path until the latter part of the decade, when the 6G roadmap becomes clearer. The good news for mobile operators, according. principal analyst Martin Scott, is that there are multiple potential roles for them in the 6G metaverse era. They could provide connectivity both inside and outside the home, curating content experiences and supplying computing capability, a critical enabler. Will they be giving the content providers a free lift there still? If so, who’s going. fund that?