It’s hard to avoid the term metaverse these days. But the truth is, to reach its full potential, the 5G metaverse relationship will be key. We explore how 5G can enable exciting uses like metaverse VR, metaverse XR, and help make Web 3.0 a reality.

Chances are you have been in a metaverse already! Minecraft, anybody? Or, Fortnite? What about Pokémon Go or Roblox? The real metaverse afficionados reading this blog post will have been frequenting Decentraland, maybe even hosting their own NFT art exhibition there.

That’s a lot of new terminology in our opening paragraph. Let’s dive in and try to understand what this all means and – most importantly – how it relates to another emerging technology: 5G. Indeed, we believe that 5G is a critical enabler for the metaverse and its device and application developer ecosystem.

What is the metaverse?
The term metaverse was coined by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel “Snow Crash”. It remained buried deep under the snow for several decades, until Facebook announced a virtual reality (VR) powered metaverse to be the next big thing. So big, that this once trillion-dollar company rebranded to Meta. The internet, device and connectivity ecosystems have been in frenzy ever since.

The concept of metaverse does not belong to Meta, of course. It thus means different things depending on who you ask. We could share formal definitions here, but would rather concentrate on the three important elements each of these definitions embrace.

First, and most importantly, the metaverse embraces a social element. It is not only a virtual space where users spend time (and money) on their own or with a selected few. Rather, the metaverse is intended to resonate with the very social fabric which underpins human society. Once in the metaverse, you and/or your avatar are able to interact humanly by looking into each other’s eyes, perceive body language and maybe even shake hands or hug each other.

Second, it has a strong virtual narrative. For some, the metaverse exists in a purely virtual world which can be consumed by us through VR headsets; an example here is the game Fortnite played with metaverse VR interaction using such headsets. For others, it has a strong foundation in the physical world but with digital overlays experienced through augmented reality (AR) or the more interactive mixed reality (MR). An example here is Pokémon Go played through a mobile phone or AR glasses. Either way, our experiences and ways of social interaction are significantly augmented with persistent virtual content. Access to the virtual world of the metaverse and haptic interaction therein is enabled by any of these 3D eXtended Reality (XR) devices, and in the interim via today’s 2D screens leveraging WebXR technologies.

Third, it is accelerated through novel technologies, like Web 3.0, blockchains, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), 5G, digital twins, artificial intelligence and XR devices, just to name a few. It is important to understand that the metaverse could probably exist without most of these tech ingredients, but uptake and scale would be seriously hampered. We will give a few examples further down, once we have discussed the building blocks of the metaverse in more detail.