As metaverse hype gets louder, the technology is “still just a vision,” VRdirect Founder Rolf Illenberger said, and for metaverse actualization, telecom companies need to improve and upgrade networks “tremendously.”

“I find it interesting how little the telco companies are actually trying to get into this new technology, because even more than in the current internet world, they are the necessary gatekeepers for that,” Illenberger told SDxCentral.

On average, current household networks can't support metaverse applications oft-advertised by Meta mogul Mark Zuckerberg, such as playing table tennis in a virtual reality (VR) headset, Illenberger said.

The metaverse will require edge computing, 5G, and fiber backbone. Telecom companies like Deutsche Telekom have stumbled in attempts to better monetize internet access, he added, and missing the opportunity to claim importance in the emerging metaverse market will reduce their proposition to “just being the dump pipe again.”

“It's almost like you always have to tell them what opportunity is in it for them because all of them seem to be retrospectively looking at mobile contracts and mobile phones, and what they don't get is a VR headset is the mobile phone 2.0,” Illenberger said. "You always hear telcos complain, oh, we have to make the case for 5G. Here it is. It's a VR headset. Build a 5G chip in every VR headset. That's what we're all waiting for.”

Illenberger said Zuckerberg announcing the Facebook metaverse project in October 2021 was a catalyst for the concept, and by 2022, “it felt like no executive in a larger corporation could afford to not have an opinion about the metaverse.”

“Whether you're HR responsible, whether you're responsible for a factory site, whatever your area of responsibility is, you needed to have an opinion about the metaverse, and that led to an enormous increase in the interest in all kinds of technologies,” he added.

But according to Illenberger, many people still don’t understand that metaverse is “not here yet,” and enterprises should focus now on VR as a key technology to readying for when it is here.

“VR has moved out of the corporate playgrounds, away from the innovation budgets, away from the innovation teams, and the piloting phase or the [proof-of-concept] phase or whatever you want to call it, and has moved out into the real operations,” Illenberger said.

Despite VR technology being key to future metaverse success, it’s difficult for enterprises to commit for fear of being locked-in to one ecosystem provider years from now.

“If you're an IT decision-maker, and your decision is that you have to order 25,000 VR headsets … what are you going to do? It's a horrible situation right now,” Illenberger said.

Illenberger noted it's “clear that Meta is way ahead of everyone else in this industry,” calling the company’s recently announced partnership with Microsoft a game changer.

However, he pointed out that the trickiest decision for IT teams is in the hardware piece of VR right now. Microsoft Teams as a hybrid version for Meta Quest devices and PCs is not available yet, and “if you ask Microsoft or Meta you don't get any timeline, you won't get to see anything. … It’s frustrating for these IT decision-makers.”

As metaverse and VR decisions have been handed from innovation teams to “the super boring, super diligent IT people who aren’t easily convinced by glossy advertising,” it presents a company like Meta with new challenges, Illenberger noted.

Meta VR Head John Carmack's recent resignation and statement that the company’s VR work is “inefficient” came as no surprise to Illenberger because “it's not an IT organization,” he said. To stay on top, Meta will need to learn the language of IT decision-makers whose checklists include privacy, data protection, and maintenance of hardware.

“The hardware IT guys are with Apple or are with the Asian hardware manufacturers. Meta was an advertising company just like Google is an advertising company. So they have to first make the transition,” he said.

In the meantime, challengers like Lenovo have already announced that they will have VR headsets on the market as early as the first quarter of this year, and Illenberger noted some enterprises might be waiting to see if other tech giants like Apple will announce products of their own. Other competitors like China’s Bytedance, which now owns Chinese VR headset maker Pico, won’t give up on competing with Meta anytime soon either.

“I suspect we're gonna have another phase in the market of at least like 12, 18, to 24 months where the biggest tech companies of our time will really compete for market share,” Illenberger said.

And that provides an opportunity for “all players in the market, the headset manufacturers, the ecosystem providers, and also the network providers to really work hand in hand if we want to make this vision a reality," he added.