AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile US completed tests of an industry led cross-carrier API interoperability service targeted at helping operators derive more revenues from their data-rich 5G network architectures. The tests echoed what has been a rash of 5G network-focused API efforts from operators around the world.

The specific U.S. testing was done with developers at drone maker Inspired Flight Technologies. Adam Bilmes, senior director of business development at Inspired Flight, noted in a statement that “the ability to access this type of network information via an API will allow us to better support drone flight and management, to pinpoint where to send relief immediately after weather events and/or to fly over communications and other assets to expedite recovery efforts.”

Verizon, as part of the trial, was also able to test a device status API using insight from its work with MITRE Engenuity. This work will allow connected devices to maintain connectivity and to be recontacted if technical issues arise.

The efforts were based around the Open Gateway initiative that was launched last year by industry trade group GSMA. That initiative is targeted at standardizing network APIs that the telecom industry can offer to the developer and application community to simplify revenue-generating interactions.

Open Gateway uses common, northbound service APIs to expose a mobile operator's network capabilities “within a consistent, interoperable and federated framework.” The project launched with eight APIs, including support for SIM swap, quality on demand, device status, number verification, edge site selection and routing, two-factor authentication and carrier billing.

The work also builds on the open-source Camara project GSMA launched with the Linux Foundation in early 2022. The GSMA Open Gateway APIs are defined, developed and published in Camara.

The Open Gateway initiative launched with support from more than 20 companies, including global operator heavyweights AT&T, Bharti Airtel, China Mobile, Deutsche Telekom, Verizon and Vodafone. It also included positive commentary from most of the cloud ecosystem’s largest players, including Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft.

Japan’s SoftBank also announced a successful Open Gateway test that used a common API to control the image quality and communication quality of remote monitoring cameras. GSMA also touted successful Open Gateway work by operators in Indonesia and South Africa.

Why common APIs?

Operators views the rise of open network APIs as an inflection point in how they will be able to monetize their network deployments, but those efforts require an initial focus on partnering with the right organizations to steer that inflected point in the right direction.

Stephanie Ormston, assistant VP for digital services integration at AT&T, told SDxCentral in an interview last year that the carrier has been working through this API evolution for nearly a decade, reaching back to the operator’s initial push in virtualizing its network architecture. Those efforts hit a significant milestone in 2020, when the operator surpassed an ambitious virtualization goal, and the following year when it decided to sell its internally developed Network Cloud technology to Microsoft.

“We want our network API strategy and we want our network to be the programmable application upon which they can build out all of those diverse use cases,” Ormston said.

That programmability was there to an extent with previous 4G LTE networks, but operators failed to take advantage of that possibility and most of those profits went to the application-story community. AT&T doesn’t want to miss that opportunity this time.

“Building out networks is really expensive, and what we realized is there was more that we could have done around 4G, and so we see 5G as the opportunity to take advantage of that,” Ormston said. “Within that I think there’s the cost efficiencies that can be realized, the optimization that can be realized, but we also do believe that there is going to be a next evolution in the next generation of technology and innovation in the market. We want our network to be not only in support of that, but to be the place that we can co-create and co-develop that type of innovation and share in that value creation.”

Analysts have pointed out that operators have so far failed in these efforts.

“Thus far, the 5G era has been playing out very similarly to the 4G era when [communication service providers] invested hundreds of billions of dollars in spectrum and network infrastructure and realized paltry [return on investment] as the majority of the new value from those investments went to over-the-top players, most notably hyperscalers,” Chris Antlitz, principal analyst at Technology Business Research, wrote in a recent research note.

Vendors are also banking on the common API opportunity.

Verizon and AT&T have both announced efforts to tie network APIs into Ericsson’s Vonage platform.

Ericsson has been touting Vonage’s API opportunities despite the vendor having recently taken a $3 billion non-cash impairment charge in its enterprise business segment tied to a “significant drop in the market capitalization of Vonage’s publicly traded peers, increased interest rates and overall slowdown in Vonage’s core markets.”

“Ericsson continues to advance its enterprise strategy, with Vonage’s network API capabilities being central to this strategy and the development of a global network platform,” the company wrote. “The impairment does not alter Ericsson’s positive outlook on the … market potential.”

Nokia late last year unveiled a network-as-code platform that includes a software development kit (SDK), network API documentation, a sandbox for creating software code, code snippets that can be included in applications, and developer analytics to track usage. Like many others, Nokia’s efforts are based on the GSMA Open Gateway initiative and the Camara Project, but the vendor added its own flavor on top of those efforts.

“In order to win in this particular market with developers, the Camara initiative and Open Gateway are necessary but not sufficient,” Shkumbin Hamiti, GM of Nokia’s network monetization platform business unit, explained during a press briefing. “You need to have the developer experience offered to them, and that is what is really important for the telco industry to get right; but Camara will just make it very simple to aggregate across the operators. And then even for the operators that want to open up these to the developers, the developers would have a good understanding of those APIs.”

Hamiti added that the Nokia platform “is fully compatible with Camara. … I think that has to be very clear. But there will be APIs that are different, maybe not standardized in Camara, which is very normal, and what we will see from all the platform players out there.”

What common API challenges remain?

Chivas Nambiar, GM for AWS’s telco business unit, during a press briefing this week explained that while these API initiatives “are good, but they’re not sufficient.”

“You have to have additional components,” Nambiar said. “You have to be able to take a workload or a use case, and that use case needs to run on some sort of compute, it needs access to storage and databases and machine learning capabilities at the edge. And all of those need to work together in a way that a developer can use it to create the solution and test it and see what works and what scales.”

AT&T’s Ormston noted that these efforts do point toward real progress in open API models that could financially benefit all, but details still need to be nailed down. She stated one of the biggest hurdles was defining minimum network capabilities that need to be supported so developers can start working to innovate on top of 5G platforms.

“Really figuring out what those baseline requirements are is something that we’re still trying to work through,” Ormston said. “I think our industry collaborators, our vendor partners and other operators can come together to help figure that out, but I think if the developers can also start to provide that feedback, that’ll really help us provide what we need. It’s that feedback loop that is missing right now. I think that’s what we’re working toward.”

Nambiar said that independent software vendors (ISVs) are currently best positioned as an API intermediary between network operators and end users.

“That is where I suspect longer term most of the revenue is going to come from: ISVs consuming the telco APIs to build differentiated experiences,” Nambiar said. “But it’s very early in the game. This year you have probably seen from the plethora of announcements happening right now. This is where that discussion is really starting to heat up, and I'm excited about in two years what the marketplace actually looks like.”