"Making phone calls as if the person I’m talking to is standing in front of me is one such dream that is now moving closer to reality. We are testing these holographic calls together with other mobile communications companies," said Sven von Aschwege, XR topic lead global devices partnerships at Deutsche Telekom.
The aim of the trials was to make holographic call as simple as making a conventional phone call by interconnecting their deployments so that customers can join a common holographic communication session.
“The metaverse brings a new dimension to the future of connectivity, with exciting new experiences for communicating with friends and family, or even for businesses to connect with their stakeholders. This proof of concept moves holographic communications dramatically on from science fiction to real life smartphones,” said Alex Froment-Curtil, chief commercial officer of Vodafone.
At the same time the parties are also developing a platform that will combine the two call types through a mobile connection, using a smartphone camera to generate a 2D video which is then rendered into 3D holograms in the cloud to be streamed to viewers in an augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality environment.
"We are confident that in the near future, we will be able to offer our customers a new way of communicating, using this new holographic technology to deliver a more immersive “virtually there” experience,” added Daniel Hernández, VP of devices & consumer IoT of Telefónica.
The parties are currently exploring broadcast-like delivery, creating the possibility of entire events or presentations to be conducted virtually. Future applications could include person-to-person or few-to-few experiences.
Key to this realism is the use of mobile edge computing technology, specifically distributed networks, significantly improving both latency and bandwidth.
“Thanks to this unique multi-operator collaboration, we are preparing our infrastructure to deliver open, interoperable and easy-to-use holographic communication services,” said Karine Dussert-Sarthe, executive vice president of marketing and design, Orange Innovation.
“The objective of initial pilot was to deliver a ‘one-to-many’ holographic experience with a virtualised broadcast approach that would enable an audience to see an individual present virtually – as a hologram – with stunning realism,” added Matus Kirchmayer, CEO of MATSUKO.
