On Christmas Day, Meta's "Oculus" app suddenly topped the list of the most popular apps in Apple's App Store. As an app for activating the Oculus VR headset, its downloads suddenly exploded, proving that a large number of users purchased the corresponding VR headset during this Christmas period.
This may be good news for followers of the metaverse concept. In November, after Oculus Quest 2 was revealed to have sold more than 10 million, people are more and more concerned about the progress of AR/VR devices, and the news that Apple may release an AR headset next year has also been circulated several times. In the current positioning, terminal equipment is one of the few deterministic metaverstem industries. However, for the communication technology that underpins the construction of the upper layers of the metacosm, this means a greater challenge.
In the vision of the interconnection of all things in the metaverse, virtual and reality, the evolution of communication technology similar to 3G-4G-5G will not be absent. However, more and more data traffic is having problems in distribution, such as the widening of regional gaps and imbalances in communication quality. For 5G or even 6G, some new thinking and methods are needed to maintain the full connection between the physical world and the digital world in the space of the metacosm. Otherwise, this ideal world is likely to go "offline".
In the pre-4G era, the information base was initially interconnected
5 yuan 30M monthly subscription, before the speed increase and fee reduction in 2018 has always been a stem about network fees. However, its unpleasantness lies in the fact that it has not made progress in line with the development of 4G, and it is not without benefit in the entire history of communication development.
Looking back at the evolution of the industry since the 2G era, it is these most basic data traffic and the infrastructure such as communication base stations and optical cables behind them that have laid the foundation for the application evolution from web text BBS to mobile phone short videos step by step. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, from 2013 to 2020, China's mobile Internet access traffic increased from 1.3 billion GB to 165.6 billion GB, with an average annual compound growth rate of 99.86%.
From 2G to 4G, this is the era of information infrastructure, on the river paved with hardware, the source of information flows around the world, further breaking through the limitations of the physical world and realizing the first information interconnection since the PC era. Today, it seems that the development of the metaverse may also be inspired by historical experience, because no one, including companies such as Meta, has yet proposed a completely re-pioneered world system. In this way, we can also initially find that those subjects are an indispensable link in this ecology.
First and foremost are operators, whose role needless to say, and Companies such as China's three major operators, Vodafone and AT&T are the real builders. Then there are a number of application providers, such as Tencent, Ali, Google, Facebook and other giants, they provide products or services to enrich the role of traffic.
In the middle reaches of both sides, there is also a special type of traffic distribution company, which is responsible for allocating cross-regional, cross-country or cross-industry data traffic to achieve efficient use of traffic. Among them, there are both "part-time" such as Xiaomi and Huawei, which rely on mobile phone devices to carry out business, and "full-time" players such as Youkelian, who started from cross-border traffic services, all the way to the NASDAQ listing.
At the 2021 China Service Trade Fair "New Trend Summit Forum on the Opening up and Development of Trade in Services", Ma Jiantang, secretary of the Party Group of the Development Research Center of the State Council, pointed out that from 2005 to 2019, the cross-border traffic of global data increased by 98 times. This may be the foundation of the development of UQ, but it is also the process of tilting the balance of traffic. The opportunity is here, but the problem is also here, especially the real problem that the metaverse will have to face in the future.
4G-5G, traffic Under the Matthew effect, the interconnection of the metacosm is hindered
Traffic will naturally tilt towards more valuable places, and the tilt will bring inequality.
On the application side, after the popularization of 4G, the Internet format continues to develop at a high speed, making the giant's position even larger. According to network monitoring company Sandvine, the big six giants of Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple generated more than 56% of global web traffic in 2021, and they will generate more traffic in 2021 than all other internet companies combined.
At the same time, formats such as the Internet of Things have benefited from the construction of 5G and have begun to receive more attention, and the metacosm is a more advanced move. In this process, the more areas with perfect traffic and industrial ecology, the faster the development, the greater the gap with other regions, and the Matthew effect is obvious. It can be seen that the dimensions of this gap are very diverse.
In this state, getting everyone to use a good network becomes a difficult task. Because even in areas with developed infrastructure, the time and space configuration of the network is not completely balanced, and different lines and operators will also affect the connection effect of users. The construction of the metacosm needs to open up the physical world and the digital world, and without efficient connections, the metacosm will be "disconnected". To avoid this, there are already three options to choose from.
The first is that the government, operators and applications jointly promote the infrastructure and balance of traffic facilities. In November, 13 of Europe's largest telecommunications companies, including Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone, signed an open letter calling on authorities to reconsider regulations and require large Internet companies to provide financial support for the networks they are using.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said, "Considering the bandwidth consumed by digital advertising services and the benefits that large tech companies get from a wider network of connections, requiring these big tech companies to pay will keep incentives consistent." ”
The resistance is obvious, even if companies such as Meta and NVIDIA really get something out of the trillion-dollar meta-universe industry, it will be difficult for them to give credit to operators.
In addition, you can also rely on data traffic service providers to promote cross-regional traffic balance. In the traditional telecommunications business model, users can only access the wireless network provided by their contracted MNOs, and cannot cross other local MNOs with clear restrictions across borders or across other local MNOs with clear restrictions – imagine that when you enter the world of the metaverse, the first thing becomes a few traffic cards for different "demarcations", which is probably what it means.
Ucllink has improved this state through PaaS and SaaS services: it does not own or operate physical networks, but forms a traffic pool to distribute to users by purchasing traffic from operators in various countries, as long as it is one of the hundreds of countries and regions covered by uCloudlink. This is close to the ideal state of on-demand use.
However, the problem is also significant, first, its bargaining power is related to the strength of local operators, and Youkelian itself cannot guarantee that all traffic can be bought at the best price. If operators believe that it is profitable and unilaterally set unreasonable prices, the desire to rely on technology to balance traffic distribution will be difficult to achieve. The second is the goal of free trading of its traffic, which lacks physical support in underdeveloped infrastructure areas, which can be understood as a very advanced way of dividing the cake, but the cake itself has problems.
The final solution is 6G, a technology that offers an imaginative trend of "1G" more than 5G. At the "International Symposium on Future Information and Communication Technology" at the "2021 World 5G Conference", Chen Shanzhi, director of the State Key Laboratory of Wireless Mobile Communications, pointed out that the first trend of 6G is "full coverage of air, space and earth, providing information services in any place, at any time, in any way, and realizing the access and application of various types of users such as space-based, space-based and land-based." ”
On this basis, whether it is a person who provides terminals such as Meta, or a distributor such as Ukelian, it can break through the original limitations and achieve repositioning. When 5G can't hold the ambitions of the metaverse, 6G may provide a bigger bag.
In the 6G era, the metaverse is waiting for a super connection
Metacosmity emphasizes the integration of the physical world and the digital world, which is in line with the current 6G that has been vaguely formed: IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group released a 6G white paper showing that in the future, 6G services will show new development trends such as immersion, intelligence, and globalization, forming eight major business applications such as immersive cloud XR, holographic communication, sensory interconnection, intelligent interaction, communication perception, inclusive intelligence, digital twin, and global coverage.
As mentioned above, 6G first solves the connection problem at the core of the metaverse. If the metacosm is trying to approximate the importance of the real world, it can neither break the line nor just stay in selective connections. Otherwise, its stability will be difficult to recognize.
Wang Zhiqin, head of the IMT-2030 (6G) promotion team, said: "5G is the interconnection of everyone and people, 6G gradually increases more agents, and at the same time realizes the intelligent connection of all things from the interconnection of all things, and realizes the symbiotic development process of the physical world and the virtual world." ”
The so-called super connection, on the one hand, refers to the current limited technology, the major operators and even data traffic service providers help each other, infrastructure co-construction and sharing, to achieve network cross coverage. Meet the needs of users as much as possible and connect to the physical-digital world based on existing infrastructure.
Chen Zhaohui, CEO of UQL, likened the concept of Hyper-Connectivity to "navigation + ETC" on the highway – UQT as a third-party platform, like AutoNavi Map, helps users choose the optimal network path. On the basis of communication services, it will extend to richer application scenarios such as industrial automation, autonomous driving, and AR/VR cloud computing – even on the non-consumer side, there will be a metaverse. According to Kaiyuan Securities, by 2025, the traffic of governments and enterprises will be 3 times that of consumer traffic, becoming the most important source of traffic contribution in the 5G era. Therefore, this kind of scene expansion is very necessary.
On the other hand, a major idea of 6G is to break through the current network form, reconstruct the computing power network and realize the integration of air, space and space. This will further allow the entrance to the metaverse to go out from home and even truly realize that everything can be connected.
At this node, the freer traffic sharing and transaction proposed by UCL 3.0 will not only limit the advantages to the quota allocation to meet the needs of individuals or business entities, but also be able to rely on the original platform to achieve comprehensive interconnection for the Internet, Internet of Things, industry and other fields. Under the resonance of the metaverse and 6G, the deep integration of various factors will bring about changes in traffic quality.
epilogue
In summary, the immersion, intelligence and globalization of 6G not only have unique characteristics, but also are deep inheritance of a series of features of 5G. To this end, whether the metaverse at this stage is realized or not, it is inevitable to further tap the potential of 5G technology and lay a good foundation for super connectivity.
Among them, operators sell infrastructure, players such as Youkelian sell the distribution difference between traffic, and Meta sell application forms. But no matter what the subject, the user's experience is the final foothold. At any stage, they have to be user-oriented. The continuous connection of the metaverse begins with the real world not dropping the line.