US operator giant Verizon has notified customers that it is closing down its drone software company, Skyward. 
 
Skyward, founded in 2012 and purchased by Verizon in 2017, specialised in drone management, providing a software platform, drone hardware, and training for customers interested in integrating drones within their own operations. At the time of purchase, Verizon hoped that Skyward’s platform would provide a focal point for all their drone…

US operator giant Verizon has notified customers that it is closing down its drone software company, Skyward. 

Skyward, founded in 2012 and purchased by Verizon in 2017, specialised in drone management, providing a software platform, drone hardware, and training for customers interested in integrating drones within their own operations. At the time of purchase, Verizon hoped that Skyward’s platform would provide a focal point for all their drone-related activities.

Since then, the company has continued to find success, notably coming to prominence by receiving a temporary operating licence by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2020 to help inspect Verizon’s infrastructure during the wildfires in Washington. 

Just last year, Verizon and Skyward were testing drones connected to the company’s 4G LTE network, aiming to bring the first out-of-the-box connected drone solution to the US. 

Thus, it seems somewhat surprising that Verizon has suddenly decided to axe the business, sending an email to customers this week to notify them that the business was closing down.

“We are announcing today that Skyward, A Verizon company, will be ending operations in the coming weeks,” said an email to customers. “This was not an easy decision.  The Verizon Robotics team will be focusing our efforts on ground robot management, connectivity services, and solution development.”

In a statement, Verizon said that the decision was based on “market agility” and “ensuring that Verizon continues to focus on areas that provide both near and mid-term growth opportunities,” perhaps suggesting that Skyward was not making commercial progress quite as fast as the operator had hoped.

Instead, it seems that the company will be focussing on its ground-based robots, particularly Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs).

“The Verizon Robotics Group enables enterprise customers to efficiently adopt and scale Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMR) to improve productivity, deliver faster time to insight, and reduce costs through automation and 5G,” said Verizon in a statement. 

This shift in focus is perhaps reflected in Verizon’s purchase of Austrian start-up incubedIT in February last year, a company that offers autonomous navigation and fleet management solutions for AMRs. This company was incorporated into Verizon’s Robotics Business Technology unit in July 2021, as was Skyward itself. 

What this will mean for Skyward’s employees is currently unclear, with reports suggest that some will be retained as part of the Verizon Robotics business, others within Verizon’s wider operations, and some will be forced to seek employment elsewhere.

This week, Deutsche Telekom (DT) and SKT have announced that they have struck a partnership aiming to bring South Korea’s burgeoning metaverse platform, Ifland, to German customers. 
The deal will see the pair carry out a live trial of the metaverse platform before the end of the year, with the ultimate goal of co-creating virtual content for the European market. The test will reportedly include the creation of a virtual space within Ifland modelled on a specific German city…

This week, Deutsche Telekom (DT) and SKT have announced that they have struck a partnership aiming to bring South Korea’s burgeoning metaverse platform, Ifland, to German customers. 

The deal will see the pair carry out a live trial of the metaverse platform before the end of the year, with the ultimate goal of co-creating virtual content for the European market. The test will reportedly include the creation of a virtual space within Ifland modelled on a specific German city. 

This could be just the first step of the two companies’ metaverse partnership. If initial tests prove successful, reports suggest that DT and SKT will consider setting up a metaverse JV to further expand the platform’s reach throughout Europe.

« The two companies have been discussing the European launch of Ifland since March,” SKT said in a statement. “Deutsche Telekom concluded that SK Telecom’s service has the potential to bring out positive reactions from the European market. »

This would not be the first JV the two partners have struck in recent years, having created Techmaker, a 50:50 JV focussed on creating 5G indoor technology, just last year. The relationship between the two companies extends back numerous years, but until now has focussed primarily on R&D in areas like roaming, IoT, and 5G.

As part of this latest deal, DT says it will also work with SKT’s sister company, SK Square, to develop cybersecurity and mobile app marketplace solutions, via the latter’s investments in cybersecurity specialist SK Shieldus and app marketplace operator One Store.

SKT has been developing Ifland since at least the summer of 2021, showcasing it at this year’s Mobile World Congress in February with the intention of taking it international as soon as possible. In recent months, the company has made various investments into metaverse adjacent companies aiming to bolster the platform’s capabilities, including in Morph Interactive, a 3D-motion graphics specialist, and game creator Haegin.

As the concept of a metaverse has become more mainstream in recent years, the question of how telcos can best benefit from this development has become a major challenge. 

Telcos have long complained about so-called over-the-top (OTT) players, like Netflix and Facebook (Meta), reaping the rewards of their expensive infrastructure investments – in fact, just last week the European operators were once again calling for these big tech companies to help pay for their infrastructure investments. There is a major fear from the operators that this cycle could repeat itself with the metaverse, with the operators left footing the bill while content companies reap the rewards. 

This is largely why SKT, coming from one of the most youthful, tech-friendly markets in the world, is trying to take a more direct leading role in metaverse development, seeking to become a content creator in its own right with its Ifland platform. If the platform finds success, SKT could become an attractive partner for other telcos looking for support to enter the metaverse market.

Want to keep up to date with the latest developments in the world of telecoms? Subscriber to receive Total Telecom’s daily newsletter here

Also in the news:  
AST SpaceMobile gets FCC licence to test direct-to-smartphone satellite internet
BT partners with AWS for internal cloudification
Telenor, Aker and Cognite form software security company Omny