API for telcos is quite a recent topic in the industry. Operators have been working with GSMA since 2022 to launch Open Gateway. Nokia launched its Network as a Code platform in September 2023. And Ericsson launched Aduna, its API joint venture, last year.
While momentum is building for this market, with monetisation as one of the main drivers, players seem to be scratching the surface of understanding API’s full potential.
“It’s very hard to say what is the most common use case now,” said Shkumbin Hamiti, VP of Network Monetization Platform at Nokia, in an interview with TelcoForge at MWC 25.
“What is recurring, and this is important to know, is that an API alone is not enough. That’s what we are finding out. Customers are actually looking for a larger group of solutions to solve a particular problem,” he went on.
In this interview, Hamiti breaks down use cases, explains why APIs seem to be on the rise, and flags up potential concerns and areas of improvement.
“For me, the challenge is: Are we, as an industry, going to seriously change and address the needs of developers in a more global fashion?”
TelcoForge: What are APIs for networks? Why are they important?
Shkumbin Hamiti: If you are a developer and you want to add a map to your application, for example, it takes about two minutes. You subscribe to an API, embed it into an app, and that’s it. No need to talk to anyone, no need to create a massive process, right?
Then you say, “Let’s add something more complex to my application,” like payments. After you have gone through the paperwork required to collect the money, it takes you 15 minutes to add the global payment solution. You haven’t talked to a single real bank.
However, if you need to add a capability like guaranteeing the quality of service of connection for the next 30 minutes, where do you go today? There’s no place. You have to call an operator, and you don’t even know who to call.
An operator will take you through all kinds of paperwork and agreements, and no developer wants it. Therefore, you could claim today that the telco world is not really part of the digital ecosystem creation other than providing best-effort connectivity.
That’s where this network API comes into play. We want to create a solution that developers will use like any other API.
And that’s what we’re working on. We need to make it as simple as possible so that you do not need to have a PhD in 5G to develop anything. And network API is the promise of doing that.
It also creates an opportunity to monetise network assets beyond just selling a SIM card with a package. That’s the beauty of this opportunity for operators, as well as developers in the enterprise domain.
You mentioned monetisation, which is one of the biggest question marks about 5G and possibly 6G. What possibilities do you see network APIs bringing to the game?
One simple API is device location. Device location through your phone, through GPS – we all know that that can be scoped out easily.
Now, if you want to guarantee trusted location capabilities, the best way is to go through the operators. Because the network-based location is reliable.
Let’s take a credit card company or a bank as an example. Imagine that I go to the payment terminal, and I want to pay a given sum. I pull out my credit card and put it into an NFC reader. As part of the authentication process, the first thing to check is if I have money to pay for that.
But if you want to make sure that it’s me using that card, there’s a request going to a platform that says, “Hey, where is Shkumbin’s phone? If his phone is in Helsinki, it is likely a fraud because when was the last time that he went without a phone anywhere?”
But if the phone is within the area where I’m making the payment, then you could say that this might be legit.
This is a simple one. It prevents fraud, and it helps banks reduce the cost of fraud, which I think is going to get higher, especially with the regulatory development in Europe and in the rest of the world. This information exists for every device with the operator by the nature of the mobile networks.
It’s important to notice that your phone is not being tracked, but that’s how the mobile networks work, they know where the device is.
What about more complex tasks?
We demonstrated remote driving of a vehicle at MWC this year.
We had an actual car in Malaga, which was located around 900 kilometres away from Barcelona. You could drive it from MWC. When the network degraded, we had a button which you could press to provide quality of service on demand. In about 500 or 400 milliseconds, you get the improved and guaranteed quality for your session.
What can I do with that? I can start charging the customer for better quality of service. And a portion of this sum goes to the operator. In our case, that was Telefonica.
There’s also value for the company doing the remote driving services. Otherwise, the alternative is to send a person there, wiping out the profits. They can actually be ready to pay an additional to make sure that the quality of service on demand is secure.
These examples are real use cases. They show how you can actually generate additional revenue for the CSPs.
You said these are real-life examples of network APIs. Are they using public or private networks? Or both?
One of our platform’s strengths is our robust private wireless business, in which we help customers build private networks where they need them.
So, we currently have over 850 enterprise customers globally. Our platform works across public networks but also private ones. At the end of the day, developers wouldn’t care less whether it’s private or public.
If I go back to the example of adding a map, they don’t care how Google is making their maps. They just want to see a map on a phone.
The same applies to our enterprise developers. Will this API also work on the campus edge? Will it provide an opportunity to capture data from the private network? If yes, they’ll use it.
That’s very interesting. Out of the use cases you have seen already, which one is the most common or maybe more recurrent?
It’s very hard to answer the question in that way because it depends on the industry. What is recurring, and this is important to know, is that an API alone is not enough.
That’s what we are finding out. Customers are actually looking for a larger group of solutions to solve a particular problem.
If you take drones, for example. Customers want not only the quality of service on demand, they want network insights. They want to actually know, if I go from point A to point B, which route would give me the best network coverage. Even which operator would give me the best network coverage.
What are the main challenges you see going forward?
For me, the challenge is: Are we, as an industry, going to seriously change and address the needs of developers in a more global fashion?
What developers hate most is fragmentation. Ideally, they want to develop once and deploy everywhere. And we are far from that. That’s what we are trying to solve, but we can’t solve this alone. I think we have a chance here to provide value for various industries, but we need to work much closer together as an industry in a new way.
One last question: Do you have any concrete idea of how network APIs would work with 5G Advanced and maybe 6G?
Absolutely. We think that the network API structure will be the one that will drive the mission-critical business of all the industries. That will eventually be the way how the digital ecosystem will work. With 5G Advanced and with 6G, we will get more capabilities that will be useful.
Think about 5G Advanced. You can get an even more accurate device location. If you get that through network APIs, the uses are unlimited. And with 6G, even with sensing, think about digital twin creation and access to network API.
It will definitely change the way the networks are consumed and also monetised. That’s our vision, and we think this is the beginning of the very first steps of where we need to go.
