Nokia is one of the world’s largest telecommunication network equipment vendors and thus operates with a view toward developing more advanced network architectures, but it also remains aware that these networks need to have a simplistic API connectivity systems to maximize the capability for operators to monetize their network investments.

Raghav Sahgal, president of Nokia’s Cloud and Network Services (CNS) division, told SDxCentral that this model and need led the vendor to develop its “software DNA” back in 2021, and has accelerated through the launch last year of its Network as Code platform.

That platform, alongside an developer portal, includes an SDK, network API documentation, a “sandbox” to create software code, code snippets that can be included in applications and developer analytics to track usage. It’s targeted at helping communication service providers (CSPs) use APIs to monetize their 5G network investments.

“This is a fundamental problem in our industry that we've got to figure out a way to make sure that we are able to participate in this ecosystem and be part of the value chain of all this value that is getting created, and traditionally we've struggled with that approach,” Sahgal said of past industry efforts.

The executive said that Nokia’s API efforts are focused on addressing a trio of audience segments: the industrial metaverse, enterprise IT and the consumer market. Sahgal said that the first two are starting to hit their stride while the third will take some time.

“We have a very clear strategy that we build a platform for all three, we build a platform that aggregates this ecosystem on it, so we facilitate that,” Sahgal said. “It's going to be a journey, but I think the strategy we have chosen has been manifesting itself and creating value. And we're making sure that we time the investment with the market opportunity. That's very important.”

Nokia’s efforts are also targeting an increasingly competitive market driven by significant financial expectations.

Juniper Research recently noted that telecommunication operators need to embrace enterprise efforts around APIs and IoT if they want to maximize their 5G networks, adding that those efforts will be part of a $900 billion global telecommunications market in 2024. The research firm specifically cited the use of cloud technologies to support APIs that adhere to the open source Camara project and industry work around the GSMA Open Gateway initiative.

Operators are very much aware of this market opportunity and are increasing their focus on these efforts, with most of that work based around the Camara project and the GSMA Open Gateway initiative. But analysts noted that operators have historically been unable to gain a financial foothold in cloud-based opportunities to monetize their network investments.

“From a technology stack perspective, from a cultural perspective at the telcos, from a talent and operation model perspective, institutionalizing and monetizing network APIs is really hard for telcos. We've seen this. They're struggling to get the developer community to pitch in,” Chris Antlitz, principal analyst for telecom at TBR Insights, explained during a post-MWC Barcelona 2024 podcast.

Antlitz did note that there has been some progress toward these efforts, “but if you look at the big picture and where they need to go in terms of scaling, in terms of building business models around these, in terms of institutionalizing and changing their ways of working to make network APIs and enablement platform, we're not seeing that. There's what is being said and there's what's being done.”

Nokia is also far from alone in attempting to help operators bridge the gap between what is being said and what is being done, or for that matter in getting its own share of the market.

Nordic rival Ericsson has been leaning heavily on its Vonage business to drive API opportunities from a developer and network perspective, while hyperscalers like Amazon Web Services (AWS) have been attempting to layer their robust developer communities on top of these network efforts.

Sahgal said that Nokia’s approach is unique in the market because “we are bringing the ecosystem.”

“You’ve got to think about how you bring the network capability and expose it,” Sahgal said. “You've got to understand the radio network. You've got to understand the transport network. You have to understand the core network. You have to understand all of these things because when you're delivering, for example, a quality of service API to an application that has to be across the network, how do you how do you bring that together. It's just not knowing that I have an API, but you got to actually bring the APIs from the radio side, from the IP-optic side to the core side, to the cloud side and bring it together.”

“How are the hyperscalers going to do that. How are the CPaaS [communication platform-as-a-service] providers going to do that?,” Sahgal  asked.  “How our competitors who only have one piece or another, how will they do it? Because of the width of Nokia, we understand the network end to end. We've got radio, we've got IP optics and fixed, we've got the whole core portfolio, all the orchestration, we work with cloud that puts us in a very different position and we are not competing with ecosystems, we're working with them. And that creates the big unique differentiator of how we unclutter and be relevant.”

Those efforts are gaining traction in the market. Nokia has collaboration agreements with 11 network operators and ecosystem partners for its Network as Code platform, including deals with BT, Dish Network, NOS Portugal, Telia and Telecom Argentina.

Nokia this week also scored a deal with Infobip to leverage their respective API platforms so that developers can more quickly build telecommunication network-powered applications. The deal combines Infobip’s API focus on real-time communication features like text messaging, voice, chat applications and network APIs and Nokia’s Network as Code platform to provide coverage of network and CPaaS APIs in the development of new use cases and the capacity to enhance application performance.

Sahgal acknowledged that these industry-wide efforts remain a work in progress but thinks that work is indeed progressing because it must.

“If I look at the past, a lot of the value got taken away from our industry,” Sahgal said. “The way we are working this is to make sure that value is equally distributed to where you provide what you provide when you become part of that ecosystem. We believe that's a must in terms of the value-sharing. We believe it's the right model and that's the model that will actually drive it to success. So, for us, making sure that there's value share of things that are being provided is absolutely the right way to go, which we didn't do in the last go around.”