Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (00:05):
So we're at FutureNet World in London. I'm here with Dr. Hartmut Wittig. He is a VP at Magenta, API, which is part of Deutsche Telekom. Thanks very much for taking the time to join us today. So can you just tell us about Magenta API? What is this part of Deutsche Telekom doing?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (00:24):
Yeah, so Magenta API consists of two parts. One is our team is called Magenta, API. Because we are developing this market further and approximately a kernel of 50 people in Deutsche Telecom organization and plus 200 people which are collaborating very closely with the other, for example, folks from the T-Mobile, US folks from telecom Europe, folks from telecom, Deutschland and Magenta API stands for a very customer oriented set of APIs where we try to do the next best thing and the new thing in the market because we are a very strong believer of standard APIs of exposing them, giving all developers and customers the power of telecommunication. In your hands,

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (01:16):
Where is Deutsche Telekom in this process of opening up its network APIs to enable developers to develop new applications?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (01:24):
Yeah, so we are a very strong supporter and we are very strong key enabler of various standards. For example, in the Kamara ens in the GSMA, we are pushing extremely hard to get one standard because we are a strong believer. If you think about a global networking story we have to provide to our clients as telecommunication companies worldwide, we think the first thing which has to be done is the same standard format. And this helps really the developers not to develop for the Deutsche Telecom customers only and the Vodafone customers only. And we are on the same page because we think on a global telecommunication market and the better we are doing a external communication industry, the better is it for our customers and for the developers also. And I compare it always with think about the hyperscalers, what they have done in store in compute, the same as possible to do it now with networking.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:22):
Okay.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (02:23):
And so are there any early examples of services that have been developed from these standard APIs? Are you at that stage yet?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (02:32):
Yeah, so there are very familiar examples and the communication APIs. So my best example is where since more than 20 years, but we SMS because many, many SMS will be sent around the world and the key enabler is really I send an SMS to my communication partner and he gets the answer back and forth, back and forth. So the newest thing are our agenda APIs in regard to mobile connect interfaces. So we see some killer apps because there is an enormous question of trust. To do something we see authentication number identification and that's one thing we have done to the market. We have opened it up because we think it's necessary to increase the security by having on the one hand side the data protection laws, which often requires a consent of our B2C customers also, but it makes the online portals, the banking applications much safer when they are today.

(03:34)
And the latest member of the club are the, so-called 5G quality on demand APIs where we use a specific feature in 5G, the quality reservation or the experts are saying network slicing to give some reservations and premium services to our clients. For example, think about medium broadcasters today, very cost intensive transmissions over the satellite. The same can be done by network reservations. We have done with many broadcasters already, for example in Germany but also in the US for certain events event is overcrowded, nobody gets bandwidth. That's something we can guarantee for a specific medium like 5G to the media broadcaster. Another killer example is really what we have done with the police in Germany because even if the networks are congested, they have a guaranteed reservation with the policemen can communicate with each other, but the body cams can be monitor toward in real time. So these are some applications which are becoming more and more popular and industry companies are asking us to get those services. The car industry is asking for those services because it really makes sense to get information a second before an accident instead of after for example to avoid it.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (04:54):
Okay. And these are all based on then standard APIs and you mentioned the GSMA there before. How important is that the GSMA open gateway initiative in terms of enabling this and helping more developers to understand what capabilities are available?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (05:14):
I've been a developer 20 years of my life. That's why I know from the other side also what I'm talking about. And a developer has always in mind a certain software and normally the software is not constrained by a certain country or by a certain telecommunication company. He wants to have in their customer audience as many people as possible. And that's why it's very important from a technical point of view to have one standard. So in this one standard enables them to program everything against one API and we are a key, we are convinced with our hearts that these standards in a technical sense are necessary to convince the developers and based on the developers, also the customers and also the open gateway initiative is one piece of it coin to get it more standardized. Will it end up in the standardization of a technical basis? I do not believe because think about the developer having contracts with 700 tecos around the world to make this possible. I think a piece of bitcoin must also be commercial models which are somehow also a keen enabler but not each and everybody has the contract 700 tecos.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (06:31):
So in terms of how magenta API is developing, what are your roots to market? How are you engaging with the developers and the companies you want to reach and who are those companies or developers? What are the target users for what you are doing?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (06:51):
Yeah, there are various types of initiatives we are running in our go-to market. One is for sure to address the existing ecosystems, for example, together with Google, Microsoft and AWS because there are so many developer friendly marketplaces and services behind that. But this is for sure one key market. Then another go-to market is to help other takers which are not so big and not so staffed as we are to enable this and their countries. That's another channel when we help aggregators to use those APIs because we also believe in the aggregation to have higher value services in layer three, layer four, making industry relevant examples and use cases and standards out of it. And then we have also a very good direct sales force. For example, in Germany we have approximately 3000 key key account managers which are belonging to 50,000 SMB but also larger enterprises.

(07:53)
And whereby we have a very direct and a very close relation to our big clients. And that's for sure a frontier approach. We are running there. So in the car industry we are setting up triads, we are testing APIs, we are commercializing that because they want to have the APIs for testing only and for innovation only. They want to bring automatic driving to the market. They want to have drone use cases. They want to have for example, scenarios where a fire department knows before coming into the fireplace what's happening where video surveillance scenarios are a certain type of application, but more simple things. For example, think about banking type of application where you want to know is it really the guy who is in front of me or has a SIM swamped and has been mobile foreign hijacked before. That's really have saving much money for the banks because if you do not have such mechanisms, the fraud is increasing at any point in time. Okay.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (09:08):
And in terms of these direct relationships, I'm sure those are probably the optimum ones for magenta API. How involved is your magenta API team in the process of working with that direct sales team? Because they need to understand what you are doing, they need to be able to communicate it to the enterprises. How tricky is that or do they all get it?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (09:36):
So it's really hard daily work because of it. I have to leave tomorrow because I have tomorrow my next four or five customer meetings. But it's a very direct response to what we are doing in VI mentioned the API arena. And we are knowing so much better than what is the pain point of a customer, what is the challenges, how to address and transform it not only into our APIs, we are also extremely helping us in our roadmap. So what comes next, because you might know camera is now published over 50 APIs and the next best API to be implemented is in our organization always driven in the mixture of what is our own capability to expose on the one hand side. On the other hand side, the customers are saying which demand he has for certain APIs and always based on standards. So that's one paradigm or mantra I would say to do it based on standard means with not only with Doche telecom and their customers in the game, but also all core petition partners as for example, Telefonica and the others. And for me it's an activity for market development and business development similar to in the IT arena the hyperscalers are doing.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (10:57):
Do you think that the understanding of the opportunities is that people are grasping this quite quickly and understanding the opportunities and able to communicate that? Is this happening quite quickly?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (11:11):
I think so from time to time we have some challenges. For example, in the US we are the first having a standard architecture for 5G in Germany. This is coming now approximately in October. And that helps very much because the bandwidth is growing and as we have no more bandwidth, more reservations can be done without suppressing public customers for example. So that's one key enabler we have in mind. On the other side, from the customer side, we see use cases which have the potential to explode. Think about our tests we are doing with the car industry. So we have 20 million cars on the road. So the complexity is not to have bond test and the next test. So the car industry and especially in automated driving is very close to go to the market. And to do so you at least have to have a view camera. And for example, if you think about cranes or cars and lorries, you need to have the ability to hook on the current video stream to see what's happening there. For example, it's not completely autonomous as in other countries, but at least in Germany it will be a hybrid mode of operation, but for sure not for the next 10 years when a driver is in the car who could use and interrupt and take over the control. We hope that this will be done by video over the network and that's also one target we have.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (12:42):
Wow. So a lot of learning going on here with the different opportunities. Now of course at the end of the day nobody is doing this just for fun or because they can, this is about growing business relationships and driving revenues and making money. So who in this ecosystem is going to be able to generate profitable revenues from the exposure of network APIs?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (13:11):
So my thinking is on the one hand side we have invested a two digit billion number in 5G and the return, and I'm sure that other holders are feeling similar, the return does not come really over 5G 5G campus networks. And even from the B2C business, we do not notice any increase of data rates or any data prices and even the iot sector is not bringing that money back. So on the other hand side, we see a tremendous need for premium services and premium bandwidth and delay services in the technical sense that all of a sudden brings also new application types and new types of quality into premium services. You can compare it with a video stream for example, which can be interrupted, but if your life is depending on that, I pay a premium service and by doing such offers and by providing API, which means that you can use a much finer granularity than all or nothing, we see a commercial commercial chain to use it.

(14:23)
And for example in the 5G arena, it is really from the beginning now the video transportation and not only download videos but also upload. It's all about instant software applications to the car. For example, if it's not the best idea to upgrade the car by driving on the other hand side, it's also not the best idea to go with every car to the service stations. They will explode. And there are many, many services where we see a commercial interest of our clients and yeah, is it a hundred percent clear how to commercialize it somehow customer driven on the one hand side but also driven from our network capabilities. And yeah, we are somehow on the move, but I can promise you that we have approximately personally since January I've hundred customer meetings, which I did. And there's a huge interest in both the quality and demand stuff also in the mag agenda, in the agenda interfaces with regard to mobile connect interfaces more from the authentication side, but also the all business of RCS for example. And SMS remains intact because the more bigger companies are moving out of it and moving over to RCS because in iOS 18 we expect, but with we also part of the Apple ecosystem, the more this happens, many, many SMB companies are trying to get it done. For example, calendaring, if you have a date with your doctor, it's usual right now to get an acceptance, to get feedback questionnaires and so on and even old stuff is moving forward and it's getting a arrival now.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (16:12):
And so if I understand correctly, it's still kind of being figured out if you are engaging with the application developers through the hyperscalers, that it's still being figured out well who's going to make the share of the revenues from the resulting service? Are things still flexible there? It's still being figured out. Is it?

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (16:36):
Yeah, so I personally expect half the majority of our key customer applications will come from a direct approach from a B2B customers. And the other half is for sure the developers out of the ecosystem. As soon as we have more standard APIs, as soon as we have standard business models which appeared more attractive than one by one by one, we accept a very high expect, very high acceptance also from the developer side.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (17:06):
Excellent. Well, Hartmut great to hear about Magenta API and great to see a specific unit within a large network operator focusing on this and helping to develop. So great to hear your story and thanks very much for joining us today.

Dr Hartmut Wittig, Deutsche Telekom (17:26):
Thank you very much and it was a pleasure to meet you. Thanks a lot.

Ray Le Maistre, TelecomTV (17:30):
Thank You, Hartmut. Thank you.