“The Next Frontier”: Towards the metaverse and immersive data

Marc Price

TELECOMMUNICATIONS has been an essential tool for businesses to reach their customers in the modern era. This is as true in Asia as anywhere in the world, where data communications is pervasive across territorial boundaries and diverse terrain.

In recent times, basic communication has evolved, first to data-rich communication, and more recently to audio-visual data and video. We are about to enter a new era, one of immersive data, featuring augmented reality, virtual reality, as well as services featuring depth perception and ultimately catering to other senses, including touch and even taste and smell. The metaverse will be constructed in this virtual frontier, and the power to both communicate and persuade will be improved with these new capabilities.

Across Asia, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) are the lifeblood of many economies. Operating across every conceivable sector, they comprise the vast majority of all commercial enterprises with as many as 98 per cent of businesses listed in the SME category. They also account for huge swathes of the working population with SMEs responsible for employing 60 per cent of people as an average across the region. According to UNESCAP, SMEs contribute significantly to GDP, with the sector accounting for 17 per cent of the total in lower-income countries and as much as 50 per cent in more developed economies such as Singapore and Japan. 

As SMEs in APAC look for growth, and ways to counterbalance headwinds from economic challenges arising from the pandemic, opportunities are arising to employ immersive data, and the metaverse, to create new relationships with prospective customers.

The opportunity is huge. Earlier this year, JP Morgan’s report on the metaverse estimated that US$54bn is already spent on virtual goods, with that number set to rise sharply. This represents a significant opportunity for businesses of all sizes, and there are plenty of companies set to take advantage of both the buzz around the metaverse and the business opportunity. Visa, for example, held a virtual party in its metaverse property at Bitcoin 2022, while Accenture is providing a new way for their own employees to onboard, even as they focus on transforming the enterprise and the modern workplace.

With immersive data, the metaverse is partly about digital extensions of physical items, but also about opportunities to reach consumers in completely new ways. In Australia, Bubble Tea Club started business at the height of the lockdowns. Its owners showed people how to make bubble tea at home using ingredients they sold via messaging apps, and it has become an A$2m operation.

As we look at the opportunity for smaller businesses across this region, Asian SMEs have a key advantage over their Western counterparts – primed and ready consumers. With the huge popularity of eSports in the region, alongside a voracious appetite for all things digital, Asian consumers are already comfortable with living large parts of their lives online. 

This opens up enormous opportunities for SMEs that can extend their brands and products into the digital realm. We have already seen Nike, for example, open a store in the metaverse and attract 6.7 million visitors from 226 countries since November 2021. 

As the metaverse becomes a reality for businesses of all shapes and sizes, SMEs in Asia are going to need help, and this is where the forward-thinking telecoms companies in the region can play their part. New tools and services that bring the metaverse to even the smallest of organisations will really help drive home the advantage.

Telecom companies in Asia have already shown their appetite for innovation, notably moving quickly to embrace the opportunity of 5G by rolling out territory-wide high speed, low latency networks. This is critical to the metaverse where the consumer experience relies on high speeds and ultra-low latency to deliver the virtual and augmented realities that bring them to life. 

Telecom companies will also need to innovate in their business models too. Traditionally, the entity charged for broadband is the person or business that uses it. But in the more complex world of the metaverse, this will need to change. Let us take a simple example: the kids are playing Minecraft when an advert for a pizza company pops up, and they decide to place an order. Who pays for the broadband usage? Is it Minecraft because the kids are in that realm? Or does the pizza company pay, because its service is being used and the cost could be integrated into the fixed costs that form part of its finances? Or are the costs borne by the family?

These are complicated issues to resolve but doing so could put a turbo charge under the metaverse, accelerating SME business in the region.

Telecoms companies will also need to play a wider, societal role too. While 5G is the first generation of mobile broadband capable of supporting the technologies that underpin the metaverse, 6G will take things – quite literally – to the next level. We saw in Singapore’s most recent budget statement that the city state is already investing in next-generation telecom infrastructure. If other governments around the region plan ahead, the benefit to Asian SMEs will be enormous.

Despite the metaverse still being in its infancy, it represents a huge business opportunity. Not only could it potentially offset the damage wrought by Covid-19 across almost all Asia economies, it could also be the great leap forward businesses in Asia need to compete on a global scale. Much, though, will come down to telcos recognising the opportunity and providing the support SMEs are going to need, and working hand-in-glove with governments. Immersive data will change our lives; adaptation to these changes will improve prospects for businesses that can stay ahead of the curve.

The writer is chief technology officer of MATRIXX Software