What is the metaverse?

The Metaverse is a virtual world that is linked and created through technological means. It is a digital living space that has a mapping and interaction relationship with the real world and possesses a new type of social system.

The metaverse is essentially a process of virtualization and digitization of the real world, which requires a great deal of transformation in content production, economic systems, user experience, and the content of the physical world. However, the development of the metaverse is a gradual process. Supported by shared infrastructure, standards, and protocols, it will eventually take shape through the continuous integration and evolution of numerous tools and platforms. It provides an immersive experience based on extended reality technologies, generates a mirror image of the real world based on digital twin technology, builds an economic system based on blockchain technology, closely integrates the virtual world with the real world in terms of economic systems, social systems, and identity systems, and allows each user to produce content and edit the world.

When the cable manufacturing industry encounters the metaverse, what can we prepare now?

To achieve the metaverse, it is naturally inseparable from the support of the underlying physical layer, which needs to be built on the basis of the ICT network. Currently, whether it is the Internet infrastructure or the hardware devices of virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality, including VR, AR, MR, and XR, all require optical fibers and cables to "weave" a network, thus taking the lead in driving the arrival of the era of the Internet of Everything.

In the virtual reality world where everything is interconnected and digital symbiosis exists, higher requirements are put forward for network bandwidth, storage capacity, and computing power. At the same time, the construction of new data centers will become the most powerful fundamental material support for the "metaverse" and will also give rise to a huge demand for special data cables for the metaverse.

Data cables are communication cables that transmit network signals such as voice, images, and data. In smart scenarios such as residential areas, commercial buildings, hospitals, and industrial sites, and when used for signal transmission within electrical equipment and high-speed data transmission between Internet devices, data cables, as important basic communication materials, play an irreplaceable role.

Yu Jianing, Executive Director of the Metaverse Industry Committee of the China Mobile Communications Federation, stated that the development of the metaverse is by no means "abandoning the real for the virtual." The "Plan" also proposes that the development of the "metaverse" track should focus on fields such as aviation, automobiles, and nuclear power, which shows the emphasis on empowering the real economy. From this perspective, for the cable manufacturing industry, which is already closely related to these real economy fields, the development prospects should not be underestimated.