Connecting Canada
Investing in 5G to elevate Montreal’s creative industry
Jul 18, 2024
When does one second really matter? When you’re looking to win an e-sport tournament, run a creative brainstorming session with colleagues, or supervise a remote surgery, it’s a huge gain – and can even change a life. By investing in the TELUS 5G Lab in partnership with Zú, TELUS supports the technological development of Montreal’s businesses and creative minds, with the promise of major positive impacts for Quebec, Canada and the world. Here’s how:
Developed by the Zú incubator, an initiative of Guy Laliberté, the TELUS 5G Lab offers a space equipped with the latest 5G connectivity for innovative businesses to create, test and experiment. Multiple studios for creating and editing immersive content, along with a vast range of tools, are provided for use by the inventive minds behind innovative solutions and game-changing technologies. Phenomena and OVA are two examples of successful Montreal businesses that have used these resources to launch their growth on the international stage, reinforcing Montreal’s reputation as a global centre of creativity and innovation and supporting the city’s economic vitality.
Over the next five years, TELUS will invest over $10 billion to significantly expand and improve its network infrastructure and operating activities throughout Quebec and in Montreal, including the TELUS 5G Lab, with the goal of promoting innovation, growth and community prosperity and vitality. This announcement is part of the company’s broader commitment to deploy $73 billion across Canada by 2028 to develop infrastructure, improve sustainability, and provide Canadians with the connectivity they need.
“The TELUS 5G Lab reflects how important it is to Zú to join with private infrastructure partners like TELUS to enable young Quebec startups to experiment and quickly develop technological proofs of concept to accelerate their growth.”
- Dimitri Gourdin, CEO, Zú
The story of Phenomena
In 2022, Phenomena organized the world’s first VR eSport Arena tournament. The event brought together 14 teams from across Canada before a sellout crowd at the Zú Atrium in downtown Montreal. Play-by-play commentary on the virtual battles between two-player teams was provided by Denis Talbot, much to the enjoyment of the audiences in both worlds (on-site and online).
“We created a tournament that people can watch live from their Twitch account, with no latency. It’s a big step forward for virtual sports.”
- Awane Jones, CEO, Phenomena
This historic showdown helped strengthen Phenomena’s position as a world leader in free-roam virtual reality in the location-based entertainment (LBE) industry.
The same arena that was used for this event now exists in over 70 locations in 22 countries. Support from TELUS and Zú enabled Phenomena to create the tools they needed to install this solution in some of the world’s biggest theme parks and entertainment centres.
The same arena that was used for this event now exists in over 70 locations in 22 countries. Support from TELUS and Zú enabled Phenomena to create the tools they needed to install this solution in some of the world’s biggest theme parks and entertainment centres.
The story of OVA
Think you need a huge programming team to code immersive or mixed-reality environments? Not when you can rely on the StellarX platform developed by Montreal company OVA. This 3D creation tool uses artificial intelligence to design entire virtual worlds with simple drag-and-drop actions, substantially reducing the learning curve and making the technologies of the future more accessible to everyone. The TELUS 5G Lab’s cutting-edge infrastructure opens up new possibilities, including content streaming from a laptop to a headset.
“The ability of 5G networks to stream complex, high-resolution solutions without the constraints of a connected computer points the way to lighter devices and reduced storage. That will have a major impact in the industry.”
- Harold Dumur, CEO, OVA
And since a picture is worth a thousand words, OVA put on a live demonstration of its powerful platform at the recent NVIDIA GTC 2024 conference, shared entirely through its 5G network. Over 200 industry professionals were blown away by StellarX’s ability to generate complex mixed-reality environments with no latency.
This partnership proves that cutting-edge infrastructure can transform access to mixed-reality technologies. Following its impressive demonstration, OVA has been approached by large Canadian organizations from such varied industries as mining, telecommunications, defence and transportation.
This article was originally published in La Presse.
