Telefónica and Meta (formerly Facebook) have partnered to launch Open2metaver, a state-of-the-art innovation center that will be at the service of companies focused on new forms of socialization and immersive experiences in the metaverse.
The deal was announced by Chema Alonso, director of digital operations at Telefónica, during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The event, which began last Monday and closes tomorrow, brings together emerging companies and developers who are invited to “benefit from the new innovation ecosystem enabled with support engineering, tools and resources of Meta.
Open2metaverse will be led by Wayra, the investment arm of Telefónica Movistar that now is looking for companies for the development of virtual worldsnon-fungible token (NFT) projects, digital identity tools, and other useful use cases for the metaverse.
This is the first joint exploration and knowledge project around new innovation initiatives. On board this test too are the seven hubs that wayra has in Latin America and Europeincluding Barcelona, Madrid, Bogotá and Buenos Aires, as details on your website.
With Open2metaverse, Meta and Telefónica’s plan is to provide previously selected local startups and developers with a 5G lab for testing applications focused on the metaverse. They will have at their disposal the infrastructure and network equipment of Meta and Telefónica, and they will also be able to benefit from the open innovation ecosystem managed by Wayra.
Telefónica explains in a release which sees the metaverse as “an evolution of the Internet supported by a set of technologies that are transforming the digital economy such as augmented reality and virtual reality.”
It also includes the creation of new value assets such as NFTs, business models based on web3 architectures, and cryptocurrencies.
As CriptoNoticias reported last November, once Facebook announced the development of its own virtual world, se interest in everything related to the metaverses has skyrocketed.
In fact, it is the applications focused on the metaverse that are starring in the Mobile World Congress event. Among them, the Korean company SK Telecom has presented its new Ifland metaverse platform, where users can interact with their avatars.
Within the app, users can open metaverse rooms, as well as choose from 18 different types of virtual spaces, such as conference rooms, outdoor stages, or rooftops. These have the capacity to hold up to 130 participants.