- The GSMA is seeking to build demand among enterprises for network APIs
- One approach is advance market commitment (AMC), now called GSMA Fusion at the industry body
- • This “slightly unproven” approach was kicked off by the GSMA in June
The Open API battle has begun — again. This time, GSMA director general Mats Granryd recently indicated that while the association welcomes the recently announced joint venture between Ericsson and mobile network operators on the marketing of network APIs, the JV is one element in a multi-pronged approach to help drive the development and take-up of network APIs on a global basis.
Speaking at a Deutsche Telekom event called Digital X last week, Granryd referenced a new tactic called advance market commitment (AMC) that the GSMA is pursuing to push the agenda of Open Gateway, the GSMA-led network API initiative.
Conceding that it is “still slightly unproven,” he said AMC involves going out to customers and asking them what they need, and then bringing a set of requirements for a particular vertical sector back to the operators in order to enable the development of a network API.
These AMC efforts have now been distilled into GSMA Fusion, described as a platform that “matches enterprises with over 700 telecommunication operators for the purposes of expressing and guiding requirements for today’s advanced network.”
It's all good
As further explained by Henry Calvert, head of network at the GSMA, the association is essentially looking at Open Gateway through three lenses, two of which relate to supply and one, namely AMC or GSMA Fusion, which relates to demand.
“The first is industry-led adoption, which is very traditional for the GSMA. The second is unlock scale supply, which is our members or companies out there coming together to aggregate the business or have new ways to take the operator exposure and supply that across the industry. We call them channel partners,” Calvert said.
The GSMA currently has 21 channel partners including Bridge Alliance, Ericsson and Vonage, Huawei, Infobip, Nokia, ZTE. Others are Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Azure, which currently act more like marketplaces.
The Ericsson JV falls within the “unlock scale supply” category. Calvert noted that there are other, similar joint ventures such as the Bridge Alliance’s API Exchange, an agreement between the three mobile network operators in South Korea to establish and commercialise APIs, the EnStream joint venture between operators in Canada, and commercial partnerships such as the one between Infobip and Nokia.
“We want all ventures to be out there and try and succeed as much as possible through standardization and scale,” Calvert said.
He added that the Ericsson JV, like other collaborative efforts, has stated that it will follow the Open Gateway principles. “So I’ve got a comfort that they’re going to follow that, and I will be on their doorstep when they incorporate in January or early next year, to say, look, could you sign the MoU to show that you are following these principles at this point in time.”
Demand generation
The third area that the GSMA is looking at is AMC, now GSMA Fusion, which focuses on building demand. “This is more about getting to the enterprise, and saying, what are your pain points? What are your requirements, and would you commit to that publicly across the industry so people can develop to that?” Calvert said.
While there are what he calls “short-term opportunities” relating to capabilities that exist today, such as quality on demand, know your customer (KYC), and insights about the connection, “there will also be areas of technology that just don’t exist, that we don’t really know how to manage at the moment, [such as] assisted driving or autonomous vehicles or autonomous manufacturing.”
For now, the aim is to “look at AMC-based models” and learn from the experiences of sectors that have made use of this approach, such as the vaccine and carbon removal industries.
It is a relatively new approach, Calvert conceded, noting that it was only kicked off by the GSMA in June.
“I’m looking for ubiquitous, industry-vertical enterprises” such as Toyota, Airbus, social media companies and others, he added. “We’re talking to about 130 enterprises. We’ve boiled that down to about seven at the moment, where we’re going to try and take them forward and see if the concepts work,” he said.
Calvert was also keen to make it very clear that the GSMA’s role is only to “build the impact” of this concept. “We’re not trying to become a market broker; that would be left to the operators,” he said.
API projects try and try again
It remains to be seen how the various network API projects will evolve, including the GSMA’s own efforts. Open Gateway, formed out of the Linux Foundation’s CAMARA open-source API development project, aims to define a federated platform for operators to port and reproduce APIs.
As things stand, the GSMA said some 60 mobile operator groups worldwide, representing 267 mobile networks and nearly three-quarters (74%) of global connections worldwide, are now part of the GSMA Open Gateway initiative.
On the topic of the relatively new AMC approach, James Crawshaw, a senior analyst at Omdia who closely follows network API developments, said it is an interesting concept but he’s not convinced AMC will work in the network API context.
“Will Facebook and Snapchat pay up front for the telecom industry to create a KYC API that will prove age is over 13? Leaving aside the fact that in a lot of countries you don’t need to provide proof of age to have a mobile subscription, my assumption is no, they wouldn’t pay up front,” he said.
Crawshaw added that AMC “is good for vaccines and other market failures where you can coordinate the actions of buyers (e.g. governments) to persuade manufacturers to invest up front in product with uncertain demand. But I’m not sure that is feasible or even necessary for network APIs. You just need to demonstrate that money is being made (e.g. SIM swap APIs in Brazil) and the laggard MNOs will follow.”
However, he said it “certainly can’t hurt” if the GSMA is prepared to talk to different industry verticals to try to drum up interest in Open Gateway.