Camara, the open source project that defines interoperable telco network APIs, has delivered its first Release, known as Meta. The release consists of 25 APIs across 13 areas. The release includes some “stable” versions of existing APIs, updated APIs as well as some intital version of new APIs.
Camara itself broke down the release in this way:
- Stable APIs with v1.0.0 versions (previous API versions have been implemented by network operators): Location Verification, Number Verification, One-time Password SMS, Simple Edge Discovery, and SIM Swap
- Further APIs which have been previously implemented by network operators, with updated versions: Carrier Billing, Device Reachability Status, Device Roaming Status, Home Devices QoD, KYC Fill-In, KYC Match, Location Retrieval, Quality-on-Demand (with qos-profiles)
- Initial versions of new APIs, ready to be implemented by network operators:
Call Forwarding Signal, Carrier bBilling Refund, Connectivity Insights (with application profiles), Population Density Data, QoD Provisioning - New APIs to subscribe for event notifications in CloudEvents format: Connectivity Insights Subscriptions, Device Reachability Status Subscriptions, Device Roaming Status Subscriptions, Geofencing Subscriptions, SIM Swap Subscriptions
Camara is an open source project that sits in the Linux Foundation that defines interoperable telco network APIs. The project is funded by its members, with the principal sponsors being a collection of Tier One operators, plus industry players Ericsson, Microsoft and Accenture.
It collaborates with the GSMA’s Operator Platform – which is a federated platform for exposing network capabilities.
Operator-Ericsson JV
Most recently many of those same operators backing Camara and the GSMA platform formed a vehicle with Ericsson to make those APIs available in a commercial manner to other API platforms and integrators – sort of a platform of platforms.
Ericsson’s Vonage will contribute its network exposure platform (Global Network Platform) into the super-aggregator (it doesn’t have a name yet). Hyperscalers (Google is already a partner) and platform providers (Vonage is one) are expected to act as channels for the APIs to their end developers.
Although commercial terms are not yet worked out, or if they are they are not yet public, Orange’s Otilia Anton, Program Director for Telco APIs, told us, “ In general, operators will have bilateral agreements with the Venture to provide APIs to the new company and get termination revenues.”
If it works, this takes care of one tricky question that has arisen before – how and where do operators meet and interface with developers and enterprise communities. Well, and again if this approach works, they won’t have to. Or at least they can do but it won’t be the sole means by which the API exposure monetisation platform rises and falls.
We asked Anton if Orange see this JV as its primary vehicle to commercialise network APIs, or is it one platform amongst many?
Anton said, “The new venture will give us the global scale and velocity that we need to deliver network APIs, providing a commercial framework to accelerate access to network APIs. It will complement our current work at Orange to prepare and expose Network APIs on our footprint. The venture will be one of the strategic distribution partners in a non-exclusive manner. We will continue to work on both direct exposure and specialised partnerships.”
She added that the venture would enable Orange to speed up the aggregation of APIs in Europe, US and Asia, accelerating the adoption by developers’ communities to initiate new revenue generation with Telco APIs.
In addition to Orange support towards the venture, we will continue to work with partners to further develop the potential of Network APIs and explore new use cases
What about other platform partners?
Talking of other partnerships, one noted aspect of the announcement was Ericsson’s involvement – what does that mean for other platform providers, notably Nokia which has had early success engaging with operators for its Network as Code platform? NaC could, of course, be a downstream customer of the new super aggregator platform venture.
Orange has to this point worked closely with Nokia on developing the ability to make network APIs consumable by developers.
Anton said that work is likely to continue, “The new venture will act as a complement to our partnership with Nokia regarding APIs.
“In addition to Orange support towards the venture, we will continue to work with partners to further develop the potential of Network APIs and explore new use cases. Our partnership with Nokia Network as Code is focused on developer and customer engagement on new use cases that can be supported by the new Network APIs – including for example the ability to offer custom support for prototyping use cases via hackathons (as we did with Nokia Network as Code at Vivatech 2024).”
