TIP launches its new Metaverse-Ready Networks Project Group

The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) has announced the launch of its new Metaverse-Ready Networks Project Group. 

As the metaverse’s use cases and associated opportunities begin to emerge, network performance and functionality needs to evolve, in order to successfully support them. The metaverse, and other immersive services like it, will demand more advanced network capabilities, achieving a higher degree of agility, programmability, performance and reliability. 

The group will accelerate the development of solutions and architectures that achieve a greater level of network readiness for metaverse experiences.

The details and goals of the Metaverse-Ready Networks Project Group

The initial co-chairs of the group include Meta Platforms, Microsoft, T-Mobile, Telefónica and Sparkle. 

The group will collaborate to align on industry-wide network capabilities, specific APIs and mechanisms required to access end-to-end network capabilities for the metaverse; define requirements and methods for measuring end-to-end quality of experience; provide a prioritisation of future network architectures that are needed to prepare for the metaverse.  

“This new group will enable operators to address the exciting opportunities that the metaverse is creating in both the consumer and enterprise segments. Telefonica is looking forward to collaborating to define the network capabilities and associated APIs needed to enhance metaverse services,” commented Alex Harmand, Head of Network Platforms at Telefónica and Co-Chair of the MRN Project Group. 

“The TIP community is the perfect environment for this initiative, as it will allow us to leverage multiple current project groups, such as OpenWIFI, OpenRAN, Open Optical and Packet Transport, to deliver end-to-end architectures and solutions that we will then test in Telefonica’s and other TIP Community Labs.”

“The metaverse is the next chapter of the internet. In the early stages of its development, it’s critical that we work together as an industry to determine what it means for networks to be “metaverse-ready,” and what we need to do collectively to get there,” added Rashan Jibowu, Product Manager at Meta Platforms and Co-Chair of the MRN Project Group. 

“We look forward to collaborating with the TIP community to lay this important groundwork and build toward our common goal of bringing the metaverse to life.”