Introduction
The concept of the “metaverse” has gained sizeable traction across various industries, with metaverse investment having reached a total of $120 billion as of 2022, and the value of the metaverse projected to reach $5 trillion in 2030, according to a McKinsey report.
Although still in its infancy, with industry leaders still uncertain of where it is headed, the technological concepts that are related to the industry given the name of the “metaverse” point towards a future where the internet would be an immersive simulation enabled by AI (Artificial Intelligence), VR (Virtual Reality), AR (Augmented Reality), and other innovations that blur the lines of human sensory perception.
With the world turning to the digital realm more than ever before, the internet’s next frontier looks set to become an unimaginably vibrant and tactile form of cyberspace, promising a wealth of opportunities for business, entertainment, and education.
However, such technologies can only go as far as the digital infrastructures that support their data flow, and for us to fully experience the immersive internet, we must address the challenges that are hindering and holding back this future.
Latency-sensitivity will need to be addressed
Presently, across the various industries, enterprises are already working towards optimising their networks for higher speeds of data transfer. These networks serve to not only connect enterprises internally and with their end users, but also with multiple external networks and business partners.
Currently, the acceptable latency for an acceptable user experience of digital content and applications is already much less than the blink of an eye, which is approximately 100 milliseconds (ms). While this speed is adequate for some mainstream internet usage, today’s digital applications already require greater speed for an optimal user experience. For many of these, even today speeds need to hit a maximum of 35 ms latency. With the proliferation of the metaverse and every innovation in virtual perception – visual, aural, tactile – the latency-sensitivity of applications will increase even more, and for most use cases settle somewhere in the low one-digit numbers of milliseconds.
Tomorrow’s Internet will need to be much more latency-sensitive, and this is due to the nature of human perception. It has been scientifically proven that it takes the human brain as little as 20 milliseconds to perceive tactile information, 13 milliseconds to process visual cues, and as little as a single millisecond to perceive auditory delays.
Considering this, the replication of these speedy benchmarks will be required to create a believable, authentic, and immersive environment, so that reactions and interactions feel natural, just like in the physical world.
The business use-cases of the immersive internet
The Lifestyle sector is already beginning to be defined through digital experience, and this will only intensify with the proliferation of the metaverse. Through VR and digital twinning, the marketing and customisation of luxury goods and lifestyle will blaze the trail, followed swiftly by entertainment and the arts, paving the way for this new immersive and interactive digital world. The mass-product industry looks set to follow suit, enabling mainstream consumers to access these experiences.
In the future, we will be able to replicate the experience of going to a standard bricks and mortar establishment. This would allow us to try on clothes virtually, feel the textures of fabric; experiencing and customising the interior of a brand-new car before purchase; smelling a perfume, or even experiencing the aromas of our next meal before going to the restaurant.
The research of future generations of VR to simulate the full range of human perception has already begun, and the application of this technology will lead to a massive increase in user expectations; one that will demand an experience that cannot be served with the commodity infrastructure of the last century.
Cooperation and convergence are the way forward for digital infrastructure
With these prerequisites, how can we meet these high user expectations and demands? The key to reducing latency is reducing the distance that data needs to travel between the users/devices and the content and applications. By allowing networks to interconnect more locally and directly with each other, an interconnection platform can ensure the shortest data pathways possible.
To create an experience that is seamless and authentic, digital infrastructure providers need to build out densely and globally distributed interconnected infrastructure, while at the same time offering an increasing array of specialized and customized interconnection services to meet the demands of business and organizations across all sectors.
No single digital infrastructure operator can hope to offer all of this on their own. Instead, we are now entering the age of infrastructure community and alliances, leaving behind the silo-mentality of infrastructure incumbency.
All digital infrastructure providers are called upon to continue their programs of expansion to offer increased access to digital services across a larger and denser geographical scope. Things like the deployment of 5G networks, accelerating the rollout of Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites, and the laying of new sub-sea cables on the ocean bed come to mind, but also fiber for the last mile, eventually everywhere, with the rollout of fiber to the house or building (FTTH/B).
For the future demands on data transfer, all these initiatives and more will need to be intelligently networked and orchestrated. Although infrastructure providers need to maintain their business case and continue to compete with their competitors, the industry requires a healthy mix of cooperation and convergence.
They will need to interconnect vastly more locally than has been the case until now.Just as the centralised cloud has needed to make room for fog and edge scenarios – each with their own key role to play in the delivery of IoT-based services – so too must network operators, content networks, and CDNs consider what roles they play in a much more finely interwoven mesh of pathways.
Local interconnection – closer to the end user – will become paramount to meet the latency requirements of future applications.
So far, we have only looked at the needs for networks to work in concert. But the same is also true of data centers – the logistics centers of the digital world. Without geographically distributed data centers for storage and caching, content and applications would not have a home close to the edge, close to the end user.
Interconnection is key to an immersive internet experience
Digital infrastructure still has a way to go until it can meet the needs of the next generation of the internet. Data will need to flow seamlessly and efficiently for us to have the possibility of experiencing the full potential of the immersive internet – with the lines being blurred between the digital and the physical worlds.
Through the ongoing convergence and cooperation between digital infrastructure providers in the present day, this future may be nearer than it seems. Organisations continue to innovate and offer new service offerings and through that, play their roles in interconnecting the world, both globally and locally.
