"How Telcos can leverage the Metaverse Continuum Opportunity"

In an Email Q&A with Voice & Data, Saurabh Kumar Sahu, MD & Lead Communications, Media and Technology, Accenture in India, discusses the opportunities, trends that Metaverse presents, and how Telcos can leverage the Metaverse Continuum Opportunity.

HOW DO YOU SEE THE ROLE OF TELCOS EVOLVING IN THE CONTEXT OF METAVERSE?

The metaverse is a continuum of emerging capabilities, technologies and experiences that applies across all aspects of business from virtual to reality, consumer to worker and from the world of cloud and artificial intelligence to extended reality, blockchain, digital twins and edge technologies. The expansion of the metaverse is pushing industries, including the telecom sector, to extend from solely physical presence to fully or hybrid digital ecosystems. 5G with its superior speed and ultra-low latency benefits combined with the latest technologies, will be a key enabler of the metaverse. Telcos through their networks and large subscriber base, are strongly positioned to capitalize on the significant market opportunity (estimated by Citi to be $13trn by 2030) in the metaverse.

Not only is the next-gen connectivity that telcos provide critically important to the success of new experiences in the metaverse, but the strategies telcos make to evolve or revolutionize their business will be essential to their future success. We see three potential roles emerging for telcos in this new virtual environment the Disruptor (focusing on developing new services, experiences, and platforms), the Orchestrator (focused on developing the enabling capabilities for the metaverse, example identity, payments and trust) and the Performance Player (focused on building and running metaverse ready networks). These roles define paths to purpose-driven growth.

FOR TELCOS WHAT ARE THE OPPORTUNITIES WITH THE ADVENT OF METAVERSE AND WEB3?