Meta wants a fundamentally new Internet for Metaverse
Meta wants to bring one billion people into the metaverse in the next decade. That will place new demands on the global network infrastructure, the company claims.
One billion people, hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars for digital Metaverse commerce, millions of jobs for developers and creatives - that's how Meta envisions the Metaverse future in the next ten years.
To ensure that this vision does not fail because of technology, Meta is calling for enormous capacity increases in data throughput and fundamental changes to network architecture. It also wants technology companies, mobile operators, service providers and policymakers to work more closely together.
"Making the metaverse a reality will require significant advancements in network latency, symmetrical bandwidth and overall speed of networks," Meta writes.
Low latency and streaming beyond 4K.
Meta picks out data transmission latency as an example. Today's app requirements are between 30 and 150 milliseconds, for example for video conferencing. The Metaverse, however, requires lower latencies in the single-digit or low double-digit range, since content has to be rendered depending on body and eye movements.
Meta describes a mix of local and remote rendering in the edge cloud as a possible solution to the latency problem. This vision of the future, in turn, would require a new architecture for fixed and mobile networks to provide computing resources at different distances from end users.
It would also have to be possible to transmit significantly higher video resolutions than 4K for future AR and VR headsets. This would require innovations in hardware and software as well as "revolutionary improvements" in data throughput and network speed.
More openness: Metaverse is an "unprecedented opportunity" for the connectivity industry, according to Meta
Traffic optimization protocols would still be developed and deployed today by both content and network providers. Meta expects "significant progress" in network quality when such silos are broken down and open interfaces are developed instead for exchanging metrics between OSI layers and network domains.
"The move to the metaverse is an unprecedented opportunity for the connectivity industry. It must be built on a foundation of openness and interoperability, and be accessible to as many people as possible," Meta writes.
Meta proposes the Telecom Infra initiative, which it founded itself in 2016 to explore new approaches to building and deploying network technology, as a potential pacesetter for this development. In addition to Meta, numerous companies from various industries relevant to telecommunications are participating in the project, including well-known names such as NTT, Orange, Telekom and Intel.
Meta plans to flesh out Metaverse's requirements for the Internet with partners in the coming years through prototypes.
Read more about Meta:
- Meta Quest 2: Now with (3D) feature films on offer
- Meta wants AI to learn and think like humans
- Meta Quest 3: These new features are coming
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