The telecommunications industry is rallying behind a collaborative effort to define common APIs for accessing network capabilities. The CAMARA project, housed at the Linux Foundation, today announced that it has graduated to a funded model with backing from major telco players.

CAMARA launched in 2022 as a community-run project with the goal of establishing standards for user- and developer-friendly interfaces for core network functions. Initially launched by 22 partners, including Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefonica, it has since ballooned to more than 250 member organizations from across the telco ecosystem.

"With such robust interest and strong collaboration, market demands have increased past the capacity of the community to run itself," Markus Kümmerle, program manager, Magenta API Capabilities Exposure / CAMARA, Deutsche Telekom, told SDxCentral. "As such, the community decided to ask for help in sustaining this growth; the funding model will provide additional resources, staff and structure to better support its growth.

To date, Kümmerle noted that CAMARA has been busy.

The CAMARA project defines and develops open-source APIs that will allow developers and enterprises to more easily access core network functions and capabilities from telecommunications operators. It aims to standardize common APIs for accessing telco network features like connectivity, authentication, location services and messaging.

[caption id="attachment_134397" align="alignnone" width="1027"] Image credit: The Linux Foundation.[/caption]

The project is working to align its APIs with initiatives such as those from the trade group GSMA so there is interoperability not just across operators, but also with cloud and edge computing environments.

So far, CAMARA has been actively working on more than 14 sets of API families, with over 50 in the backlog for future work. Kümmerle said that at the recent MWC23 (Mobile World Congress) event, more than 20 showcases were presented based on CAMARA APIs in live networks in America, Europe and Asia.

"In 2023, telcos are working on the productization and monetization of the APIs," he said.

As a fully funded project, a few things will change for the project.

"Technical direction and development will remain much the same, but we introduce a strong technical steering committee (TSC) that coordinates the work in the different subprojects, defines release cycles for each API family and makes technical decisions very fast," Kümmerle explained.

On top of the new TSC, there will also be the new CAMARA fund project to improve the tooling overall. At the top level, the biggest change will be the introduction of a board of directors to set the project direction, strategy and allocation of resources.

The big challenges that CAMARA is looking to help solve now as a fully funded effort are largely the same as when the project was created. Kümmerle noted the challenge remains to define intent-based APIs that fulfill customers’ requirements and demands.

Looking forward, the goal for CAMARA is to continue to define and develop additional APIs, as well as making sure the project's roadmap is synchronized.