Ericsson announced on Thursday it is starting a new venture with at least a dozen big-name telcos to combine and sell network APIs, with the aim of making it easier for ecosystem players to access and monetise APIs on a global scale.
The new company plans to create a platform that will provide network APIs to a broad ecosystem of developer platforms, including hyperscalers, communications platform as a service (CPaaS) providers, system integrators and independent software vendors.
The network APIs are based on existing CAMARA APIs driven by the GSMA and the Linux Foundation for the GSMA Open Gateway initiative.
América Móvil, AT&T, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Reliance Jio, Singtel, Telefonica, Telstra, T-Mobile, Verizon and Vodafone have signed on to join the JV, which is slated to be finalised in early 2025, subject to regulatory approvals and other conditions.
Under the current plan, Ericsson will hold a 50% equity stake in the company, while telco partners will share the rest. Other telcos can join for a piece of that 50% stake – Ericsson said Three Sweden (Hi3G Access) is already in discussions to do so.
Meanwhile, Ericsson’s loss-making cloud subsidiary Vonage and Google Cloud will partner with the new JV, providing access to their ecosystems of developers and partners.
The GSMA’s Open Gateway framework enable developers to access standardised mobile network APIs to create new services that are interoperable with other networks with the same APIs.
In the wake of this year’s Mobile World Congress event in February, numerous operators in China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Argentina and South Africa have launched commercial services using Open Gateway APIs, mainly related to fraud prevention, such as number verification, SMS two-factor authentication, SIM swap, and device location.
However, one drawback to the Open Gateway model is that developers have found it difficult to integrate the different capabilities of hundreds of telecom operators, which has to be done one operator at a time.
Vonage CEO Niklas Heuveldop says the new JV enables developers to access APIs from multiple operators at once, whilst also making the APIs available to a broader ecosystem of developer platforms.
"This groundbreaking, open industry collaboration effectively removes the single largest barrier for developers to leverage mobile networks to their full potential," he said in a statement. "Developers across the world's leading developer platforms will benefit from accessing advanced network capabilities in partner networks globally through common APIs, accelerating the digital transformation of businesses and the public sector."
The Bridge Alliance launched a version of this approach in July with its Bridge Alliance API Exchange (BAEx), which leverages Singtel’s Paragon orchestration platform to aggregate the network APIs of its 34 member operators. That enables enterprises and developers to streamline deployment of new services on member operator networks across multiple regions, the alliance said.
The day after BAEx was launched, Thai telco AIS and Malaysian telco Maxis signed MoUs with Singtel to use its open API-based solutions suite that authenticates digital identities for consumer services. All three are Bridge Alliance members.
