by TIP News
Extended Reality (XR) has taken a step forward in becoming a viable communications tool as industry leaders Telefonica, Meta, Mavenir, and Oracle announce a new capability called “Bring Your Own Number” (BYON) for XR devices. This cutting-edge technology seamlessly integrates XR with mobile communication, opening new avenues for immersive experiences and connectivity.
XR, encompassing Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR), seeks to merge the physical world with its digital counterpart, creating interactive environments that blur the lines between reality and technology. As XR continues to gain traction, the need for robust communication between XR devices and traditional platforms becomes imperative.
The BYON initiative empowers end-users to make and receive calls from their XR devices using their mobile phone numbers. This service ensures users remain connected to their operator’s voice services while enjoying immersive XR experiences. Simultaneously, users can continue using these voice services from their conventional smartphones.
The technical foundation for BYON was initially established within the Telecom Infra Project’s (TIP)x Metaverse Ready Network project group, where requirements have been defined, and now, collaborating companies are introducing the corresponding API to CAMARA, paving the way for industry-wide adoption. The service relies on WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communication) capabilities to seamlessly integrate with IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)-based voice services (VoLTE, PSTN, etc.) within operator networks through a network element known as the WebRTC Gateway.
The CAMARA WebRTC API acts as a unified interface, bridging the gap between the web application on XR devices and the WebRTC Gateway within the IMS network. The CAMARA API would offer unified & consistent means to control voice calls across various WebRTC gateway implementations. It would allow developers and OEMs to implement their solutions without worrying about the underlying WebRTC solutions. It would be a great solution to bring voice calls to all sorts of non-cellular devices.
In the hyper-connected world of tomorrow where everything will be connected, this CAMARA WebRTC API would allow adding communication (voice or video) capabilities to any device with web browser capability. This solution would provide connectivity to any device anywhere in the world.
A prototype will be showcased as part of the Metaverse Ready Networks Summit at TIP’s flagship FYUZ event in Madrid, between 9th and 11th of October.
Executive comments
Frictionless experiences in VR are crucial for Metaverse and BYON is a step towards it. Meta is excited to work with the TIP Ecosystem to make BYON an industry capability and success. – Bhabani Panda, Head of EMEA – Carrier Engineering at META.
BYON expands network communication capabilities to any platform/device through a simple API integration. Telefonica sees this key TIP achievement as the first milestone to foster the usage of network capabilities through API calls in order to make metaverse use cases and services successful. – Alex Harmand, head of Core & Network platforms technologies at Telefonica.