Ericsson has named its API venture and hired an executive from Vonage to lead it
Fraud prevention APIs will likely be the first releases from the company, Leonard Lee says
But in the overall picture, STL finds that a majority of developers don't even associate the term 'network APIs' with telcos
Ericsson has named its application programming interface (API) venture - which it formed with Google Cloud, Deutsche Telekom, Reliance Jio, T-Mobile and many other major mobile network operators (MNOs) in September — Aduna— and signed on Vonage chief operating officer, Anthony Bartolo, as its CEO.
APIs are essentially channels between programs to allow them to ‘talk’ to each other, and 5G was designed with this kind of internetworking in mind, which is part of reason Ericsson and friends are interested in popularizing them. The 5G core uses APIs to enable various billing and traffic management tasks.
Fierce, however, wondered when the new company will deliver its first 5G network APIs and what these. So, we asked Leonard Lee, executive analyst at neXt Curve, what his views are on when that might happen.
The first APIs from Aduna?
“From the looks of it, the first set of developer-facing CAMARA APIs that Aduna exchange will support will be what I call informational network APIs that will complement the existing SIM Swap and number verification that are finding popularity in fraud prevention applications,” the analyst said.
This follows a Vonage partnership announced with AWS in February of 2024 in offering network API-enhanced fraud prevention solution for the financial services industry. “This is one of many low-hanging fruits that can support a wide range of existing and novel business applications with “contextual information” sourced from the network. It just happens fraud prevention is a timely solution area for network APIs to address,” Lee said.
5G APIs for 2025?
The analyst adds that Aduna will likely promote the Quality on Demand (QoD) network API to foster markets for what Ericsson calls ‘differentiated connectivity’ services that can be realized across participating operator networks and network capability portfolios through aggregation, he thinks this will be one of Aduna’s first priorities.
“As you might recall, Ericsson trialed QoD APIs with Vodafone and Telefonica around the run up to MWC 2023 when the Open Gateway Initiative was unveiled and when it was announced that the Project CAMARA would become a program under the Linux Foundation. I would think they would want to bring this value proposition to participating operators especially those with capable networks,” Lee stated.
The network API gap?
There still needs to be a good deal of work done with developers, however, to get them familiar with 5G network APIs and telco APIs in general, a new survey from STL Partners found. In fact, 55% of the 415 software developers canvassed by STL do not associate the term ‘network APIs’ with telcos, instead they think of cloud platforms and hyperscalers.
So, as big a conference as MWC in Barcelona is, it may not be the only place that telco operators and vendors will need to address the network API gap.