On the first official day of the MWC, everyone fills their mouths with parallel universes: the teleco Korean KT shows what it has been up and running for months; Telefónica opened a virtual replica of its physical stand in Hall 3 on Sunday – the company has just appointed a Chief Metaverse Officer -; Qualcomm includes specific augmented and virtual reality chips in its long list of new products; and Oppo introduces the AirGlass monocle (only sold in China for the equivalent of about 650 euros), which superimposes phone information on the real-world image we’re seeing. But things end up in place when you want to experience the virtual recreation of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris at the Orange stand and they tell you that at that moment it can’t be, because three of the four viewers available are ‘have run out of battery.
5G between sharks
Without leaving the stand of the French operator, where last year a boat could be piloted live from Barcelona in the port of Valencia, this year you can remotely control an underwater vehicle inside the shark tank of the Oceanographic of the same city, the largest in Europe of its kind. It is about demonstrating how robots facilitate inspections in dangerous places, with the added benefit of controlling them through gestures, an aspect to be appreciated in pandemic times. But the device does not receive the 5G signal directly, which penetrates poorly into the water especially if it is salty, but is connected by cable to a surface buoy.
A well-rounded marriage
Telefonica with Microsoft. The three years of close collaboration between the two companies began with the use of the Azure cloud by the operator, and have now been extended with the inclusion in Movistar + of Microsoft’s gaming platform, the service Video call teams, LinkedIn training videos, and the use of malicious data data on the teleco. Telefónica’s TV platform has also incorporated Twitter and TikTok videos, various podcast aggregators, and the ability to shop on Amazon, Rakuten, and Shopify from the TV.