The Telecom Infra Project (TIP) launched a new group to position the telco world for the connectivity-demanding metaverse, marking another industry motion toward this new virtual endeavor.

TIP's initiative aims to prepare the architectures, APIs, and mechanisms "required to access end-to-end network capabilities supporting immersive applications at scale."

T-Mobile, Microsoft, Telefónica, Meta Platforms, and Sparkle are starting co-chairs of the group, which will be hosting its first open doors session at the organization's Fyuz conference next week.

“As one of the major upcoming revolutions in the telco industry, the metaverse has to be built through industry collaboration," T-Mobile VP Ron Marquardt stated in the release. "We want to encourage other CSPs, technology makers, and content creators to join us in this journey.”

The elusive nature of the metaverse has slowed traction among consumers. Forrester revealed that only 23% of online adults in the U.S. reported familiarity with the metaverse, with no change since its report late last year. Yet this has not stopped the industrial metaverse from gaining recent attention.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet anticipates the metaverse will be the most disruptive technology over the next five years, according to her keynote at this week's Gartner IT Symposium 2022 in Orlando, Florida.

“The metaverse is going to be as profoundly impactful as digital,” Sweet said, explaining that while the metaverse is still in its early days, the technology will traverse all industries and fundamentally “change how we work,” with the industrial metaverse already providing digital twins to digitize managing operations in field settings.

And the telecom industry has a big role to play, with 5G paving the way, according to Jasmeet Singh Sethi, head of Ericsson ConsumerLab.

“Our research reveals that we no longer need to wait for 2026, this trend is visible now,” Sethi wrote in response to questions, with “5G users on average spending one hour more per week in metaverse-related services than 4G users, such as shopping in virtual worlds, attending virtual concerts or events, online gaming, or using AR applications.”

“In addition, 5G will enable increased usage of immersive services. A total of 41% of 4G users who plan to sign up to 5G say they will start using or increase their usage of AR applications in the real world once they sign up,” he added.

TIP’s project seeks to prepare the telco industry for the network performance and functionality needed to keep up with this growing visibility.

“The metaverse might be in a nascent state, but it is imperative to start building today the networks needed to realize the promise of a complete convergence of our physical and digital lives. Cross-industry collaboration is the only way to achieve this,” Ricardo Villarreal, director for Microsoft Azure, stated in the release.