Telecom and AR/VR Opportunity Continue to Be Realized

Mobile World Congress (MWC) in February appears to be a launching point for Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality (AR/VR) and telecom partnerships looking to leverage current 4G and upcoming 5G networks for a number of use cases. Qualcomm has expanded their Extended Reality (XR) efforts with telecom partnerships that include Sprint, Telstra, SK Telecom, LG U+, and Swisscom. Verizon recently announced a partnership with mixed reality glasses player ThirdEye Gen. Magic Leap continues their impressive funding with a new US$280 million from Japanese telco NTT DoCoMo that comes after a partnership with AT&T in the United States for brick-and-mortar device sales as well as more 5G collaboration in the future.

These announcements and others made at MWC and earlier point to an important trend in both AR/VR and telecom markets. Questions around novel device types and use cases remain, and early investment and investigation will continue

Enterprise is a driving force for both AR and VR now that enterprise VR is seeing strong adoption. As a result, the well-recognized enterprise AR use cases in cases such as training and remote expertise can be conjoined or enhanced with VR opportunity. Low-latency use cases in enterprise will primarily revolve around edge streaming scenarios, and 5G edge notes for various arenas that happen to consistently overlap with high-value AR integrations such as factory floor, warehouses, and so on are being discovered. There’s potential for 5G to better enable field maintenance with theoretically better coverage (depending on the region) on top of the higher bandwidth and lower latency promised.

There are some truly revolutionary use cases that are theoretically on the horizon, such as the combination of autonomous cars and AR/VR content consumption. These use cases can highlight immense, novel requirements in hardware, software, and connectivity infrastructure but are mostly theoretical and attention grabbing than practical. At the same time, there are more realistic use cases with similar immense networking requirements that are poised to grow in the near future. Game streaming is a perfect example; Google’s Stadia is the most recent and perhaps best example of how bandwidth and latency requirements can very quickly dwarf anything being done today. Game streaming combines ultralow latency requirements (in the tens of milliseconds, under round trip) and high bandwidth (1080 pixels is basically table stakes today, and 60 frames per second is becoming more common), with the all-important inclusion of real-time interactivity. Previous efforts in game streaming have been less than successful, but advancements in cloud infrastructure, encoding, and end user devices is propelling the market forward to a viable future; 5G slots perfectly into this market going forward.

Stand-alone VR devices fit well with a more connected ecosystem along with the ongoing potential of mobile AR and VR with smartphone cellular advancements that naturally enable AR/VR usage. As a result, expect to see more buzz around Oculus Quest and similar devices in 2019. The advancements seen on the AR Head-Mounted Display (HMD) side are equally compelling from a connectivity standpoint, with lighter and more comfortable devices allowing more ubiquitous usage (assuming content appeal catches up). The shared components between smartphones and stand-alone AR/VR HMDs also bodes well for quick uptake of next generation connectivity silicon; rather than requiring brand new designs, there will be plenty of opportunity to carry over smartphone chipsets (or at least the important parts of them) to HMDs, as has already been seen with Qualcomm Snapdragon.

There are a few significant caveats to all this 5G discussion, however. There is an almost complete lack of 5G infrastructure today. Despite AT&T’s efforts to market 5G, true 5G infrastructure is not implemented, and the scale of potential infrastructure is uncertain. Dense urban areas remain the most promising first wave of investment, but whether secondary waves will dramatically broaden that footprint remains to be confirmed. Also, the most pertinent advancements of 5G in relation to AR/VR—higher bandwidth and lower latency—are mostly reliant on millimeter-wave technology. This is inherently limiting, with issues around signal penetration and infrastructure breadth/expense that can be incredibly impactful on mobility-minded devices. Regions that have gone “mobile first” for some things (such as video streaming services and e-commerce) are ripe for 5G improvements but are also the least likely to see rollout in any meaningful time frame or scale with budget and infrastructure barriers.

Identifying realistic use cases and the specific requirements to enable them remain a priority for AR/VR. This is especially true when discussing 5G or any transformative and nascent technology, especially one as far-reaching and impactful as the next generation connectivity landscape. The activity around 5G and AR/VR right now is exploratory rather than actionable. This allows for the required research and market understanding to grow to a place where technology isn’t being pushed just for technology’s sake but instead for technology to advance to its maximum positive impact.