Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:24):
Hello, you are watching the Telco as a Platform Summit part of our year-Round DSP Leaders Coverage. I'm Guy Daniels. Now, this past year or so has seen a renewed interest in APIs application programming interfaces. The Open Gateway initiative from the GSMA was launched back in early 2023 to establish a framework of common network APIs designed to give developers universal access to operator networks. Well, I'm delighted to say that joining me now to discuss the initiative is Alex Sinclair, the Chief Technology Officer of the GSMA. Hello, Alex. It's very good to see you. So can you tell us what is the current status of the Open Gateway initiative and has it met your expectations in terms of operator engagement?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (01:18):
That's a great question, guy. The current status is that our members are fully engaged, as are their technology partners. Well, I would say we're making pretty solid progress. You mentioned it was launched last year in Barcelona. We've had around 47 operated groups that represents about 239 mobile networks. I think at the moment opcos, and it covers around 65% of global mobile connections from Brazil to China, Norway to New Zealand. We're working with a whole bunch of technology partners and cloud providers like AWS and Info B and Microsoft, goia, Ericsson, Vonage and the operators so far have made about 95 APIs commercially available. That's in about 2021 countries, I think at the moment. But that's just the beginning. Just to sort of illustrate the point, it was yesterday that we announced that the three Chinese operators, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, have launched the first commercial open Gateway APIs in China. So they've launched a one-time password, API, which we're all familiar with. So you can deliver that to a phone and user can provide proof of possession of the device. Typical use cases are the ones you'd expect onboarding the digital services, high value banking transactions, et cetera. In further news, we also announced that C Telecom, Huawei and ZT have joined the initiative. So yeah, I would say it succeeded our initial expectations, but there's a very, very long way to go.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (02:37):
Well, that's great news Alex, and it was also very good to see the initiative have so much prominence at MWC again this year and that it is continuing. Can I ask you how this fits with the Kamara project? Can you describe this relationship with the Linux Foundation and how, or even if the development of Kamara and Open Gateway are linked?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (02:59):
Yeah, another great question. So lemme start by saying from the very beginning we were adamant we weren't going to duplicate the efforts of others. Now that's not to be camera for the service APIs, but also the TM forum for their operate APIs. So we work very closely with both. We have a pretty strong relationship with Kamara. For example, we're on the Kamara technical steering committee and the outreach committee, and actually the APIs are actually defined, developed and published by Kamara, and it's an open source Linux Foundation project, which you're probably aware of, and it's got pretty broad participation. So by collaborating together, we can sort of realize our joint objective of exposing this new API NAS framework, and that will then make sure that partnerships and developers will have access to users across many, many operators. In fact, in 2023, we published a paper with Kamara Analytic and Forum documenting how we do this. It's called the Ecosystem for Open Gateway NAS API Development.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (03:53):
Okay, thanks for the update there Alex. It's all about developers really or getting developers involved to deliver these services. So what has been the response from the developer community? Because we do hear from developers that there's general gripes about API sprawl, so is there really an appetite for more APIs?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (04:12):
Well, it's still early days, but I think the response so far has been pretty positive and we have seen some interesting use cases coming through. I mean, as you kind of alluded to as an industry, we have to be clear that this isn't necessarily our strong suit dealing with developers and we have to listen more to what they want and what they need. Many operators have of course, early adopter programs, developer programs, but at the end of the day, we want to reach as many developers as possible. So as well as the sort of operated direct outreach, we're going to some of the bigger audiences as well. So we're going to sort of AWS reinvent, for example, to get through to as many developers as possible In return, we are sort of showcasing what some of the developers do in Barcelona. A couple of weeks ago, for example, in our talent arena at the mobile world capital stand, we had a 48 hour open gateway hackathon.

(05:02):
So they were basically using three of the APIs, SIM swap number, verify and voiceover wifi. Now, wifi quality on demand I think. So the developers could test their skills by literally developing in two days. The winners had to defend their actual solutions in a boxing ring, which was wide model, and they produce applications for sort of public administration, healthcare and streaming broadcast. So yeah, I think it's early days, as I said, but we're seeing some good momentum and we are trying to take it on the road, as it were to some of the bigger developer communities.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (05:34):
Well, you outlined there how the GSMA can help and some of the initiatives that the GSMA is doing to stimulate this and encourage engagement, which has been traditionally difficult for telcos. You also mentioned the hyperscaler approach is a reliance. Reliance might be a strong word, but is the use of hyperscalers here, one of the keys, because they're global telcos are traditionally more national. Is it easier for developers to get excited when they're dealing with global opportunities?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (06:06):
Well, it does vary of course, from API to API, some have very local utility, whereas others have maximum benefit globally. But we see three basic routes to market, and I think you've mentioned most of 'em, and we've actually seen all three of them emerge and we have the direct to customer end customer approach where operator will partner with enterprise directly. Obviously there's a ton of aggregators involved as you'd expect, and that's still growing, but we are seeing strong participation from the cloud players as well, the hyperscalers, and they have very, very valuable marketplaces of course, where we can hopefully get our APOs in front of as many developers as possible. We're expecting all three routes to grow over the coming year. And yeah, I think, as I said, early days long way to go, but we're seeing pretty positive responses to all three approaches.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (06:59):
Good to hear. Well, as you say, it is early days, but are we seeing any trends yet evolving with regards to API exposure? You talked about the different routes there of working alongside developers, whether it's engagement with hyperscalers or vendor based platforms or the direct route to enterprises is also an option whilst it's early days. I appreciate that. Are we seeing any trends?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (07:26):
I think it's probably too early to make a kind of definitive statement to that. As I said, all three channels to market are being deployed and they were all on showcase in Barcelona, but we tried this sort of thing before and we're not naive. Ultimately, the market will decide what the best channel is, and so we're trying to keep it as open as possible.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (07:45):
Now. Telcos are all hunting for new streams, where therefore is the economic value in contributing to a network API ecosystem?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (07:57):
Well, in terms of value, we've actually done some work with McKinsey and they've kind of estimated that if the operators do expose lots of these network assets and capabilities via APIs and they should be able to unlock around about 300 billion, I think it is by 2030. So that's a pretty bold and big number, but that's what our friends at McKinsey are forecasting.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (08:20):
Well, let's move on to the future. We've said it's early days, but we have a long road ahead of us, and perhaps we can conclude by looking at what the next steps are for the open gateway initiative. I mean, we've seen some APIs that maybe are, if we use the word low hanging fruit. I don't want to be drug to about this, but some of the APIs we've seen so far are maybe, as we might have expect to see in early days to get developers really excited and interested. We're obviously going to need to see more interesting and dynamic APIs, but what can telcos expect to see from you, the GSMA and the whole initiative perhaps for the rest of this year and looking into next year?

Alex Sinclair, GSMA (09:06):
Well hold that thought. I think it's a really good one, but we've had a strong start on the supply side, as I would say, and we'll continue to recruit more operators so that they'll expose more of their assets. We will, of course, continue to develop more APIs as well in Kamara, and we should see more examples. In fact, we will see more examples of each of the three channels to market. I would say that we want to change our glance a little bit at the GSMA to more demand side, kind of an outside in perspective, as you kind of hinted at. We've already done that with the FinTech sector, and that's where we've got these kind of fraud mitigation APIs, and they're being deployed pretty globally from Brazil to Spain, Ethiopia to Sri Lanka. Now that's a model. It is low hanging fruit because there's such an obvious utility to reduce fraud for a major bank is a big deal.

(09:54):
They're perfectly willing to pay for it, and it's the kind of model we'd like to repeat with other sectors trying to understand what they need. We want to try and create more of a kind of customer pull through rather than just an operator push. This is what we have. So we've been experimenting already with a number of potential use cases. There's one showcased in Barcelona around safe drone flight, for example. There are others around extended reality immersive gaming. Ultimately, and as you alluded to in the question, we will see more value in future coming from the more advanced 5G network capabilities and edge. So network slicing, that sort of stuff. But we have to be honest and say that will take some time to mature and scale globally. The leaders will be doing that some already are, but to get to the global scale is going to take some time. I would say the future's exciting and we can't wait to see how this develops.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:43):
Thanks very much, Alex. Well, we look forward to seeing developments, as I'm sure the whole telco community does, seeing how things go, and hopefully getting involved as well. Alex, for now, good talking with you. Thanks so much for giving us an update on the Open Gateway initiative. If you're watching this on day two of our telco as a platform summit, then please don't go away as our live q and a show is coming up in just a few moments. For now though, thanks for watching and goodbye.