SK Telecom expands the metaverse with ‘if home’

South Korea’s SK Telecom has added a new service for social interaction in the virtual home, ‘if home’ to its metaverse platform ifland.

Ifland is a personalised 3D virtual space that allows users to express themselves and socialise with others in the world of metaverse.

After updating their ifland app, users can now create their if home by selecting one of each of four terrains and six buildings. The four terrains are forest, universe, beach and city village, and six different types of buildings include a Santorini-style house, a wooden house, a Hanok (traditional Korean house), a Spanish-style house, a cabin and a modern house.

Users can then design and decorate their virtual homes according to their own personal style and taste using around 400 different items in a number of categories such as wall-paper, flooring, furniture, home appliances and props.

They can also share their daily lives, thoughts and interests by posting/displaying messages, photos and videos on a giant 3D ball or a frame that can be placed anywhere. Visitors to an ‘if home’ can give likes and comments on these posts and leave a footprint or a message on the guestbook. Users can invite guests by sending a unique URL assigned to each ‘if home.’

Consumers can use the space to play karaoke with friends, and can also meet celebrities realised via volumetric technology. Starting with Lee Sang-hyeok (aka Faker), a professional League of Legends player for T1 Entertainment & Sports, a global e-sports company, SKT plans to create more volumetric celebrities for ‘if home’ users.

Among other things, SK Telecom plans to develop e-commerce features such as selling 3D content like virtual decoration items and special effects, tickets for diverse events, and NFTs.

‘if home’ can accommodate up to 31 users. The ‘ifland’ app is offered in two different versions – the Korean version and global version. Global users can visit an ‘if home’ of a Korean user, and vice versa. SK Telecom also expects brands to use ‘if home’ to communicate with customers.

With the addition of German, ‘ifland’ now supports five different languages: Korean, English, Chinese (both traditional and simplified), Japanese and German.

“With the introduction of ‘if home,’ ifland takes social networking to the next level by allowing users to design and decorate their own space, and share their interests and daily experiences with others in the metaverse. We will continue to enhance user experience by upgrading ifland’s service features and content, and introducing the commercial offering,” said Yang Maeng-seog, head of Metaverse CO at SK Telecom.

NextGen Broadcast solution

The launch of ‘if home’ is the latest technology innovation from SK Telecom, which recently took its broadcast technology expertise to the US with Sinclair Broadcast as an anchor client.

The company is addressing the NextGen broadcast market by providing a next-generation broadcast solution built with mobile edge computing (MEC) technology for Sinclair.

MEC is a technology that provides cloud capabilities at the edge of the network by sending and receiving data to and from a cloud that is close to end user devices rather than a centralized data-centre.

Based on the MEC technology, SKT developed Petasus Media, which enables central broadcasting systems to operate local broadcasting stations through cloud-based virtualisation of the broadcast transmission infrastructure.

Petasus Media was developed by combining SKT’s Media Edge Platform and Dell Technologies’ PowerEdge servers. the company is providing Sinclair with Petasus Media applied with Cast.era’s media applications.