The telecoms sector can play an essential part in helping to develop the Metaverse, a report from a leading consulting firm has said.

STL Partners advises telecoms operators on how to adapt and evolve their business model, rethinking what they offer their customers. It claims to have identified a potential Metaverse role for telcos, leveraging broadband networks and related services as the building blocks of new virtual digital worlds. It said that that telcos can also play a coordination role that will help prevent the Metaverse from fragmenting into silos that are unable to interoperate with each other.

Although the Metaverse is not yet widely understood in the enterprise space, STL advises that it should be thought of as inter-connected virtual areas or worlds that can function as a 3D version of the world wide web. It is a place where people can test new product designs, learn new skills or watch events they can’t attend in person.

“Reliable and ubiquitous connectivity can enable companies and consumers to use digital technologies to efficiently allocate and source assets and resources,” says the STL report. “In the case of Metaverse, telcos can help people and businesses to interact and transact with each other safely and securely in 3D environments.”

The term ‘Metaverse’ entered the popular consciousness when Facebook renamed itself Meta in October 2021, prompting a surge of interest in the concept. Other organisations have outlined their own vision for virtual worlds, including NVIDIA with its Omniverse brand, a scalable, multi-GPU real-time reference development platform for 3D simulation and design collaboration, based on Pixar’s Universal Scene Description and NVIDIA RTX technology.