Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (00:10):
Hello. Welcome back everybody. We're about to start our final session of the morning debate number three. So if I like to take your seats please with your coffees and teas and get comfortable and we'll start. So as I say, it's a final debate of the morning session focused on monetizing network APIs and the push to expose network functions via APIs. It promises to open up new revenue channels and drive innovation and increased speed to market new digital services. However, there are associated risks and obstacles, which I'm sure we will get to. And we want to know if successful API strategies will be the differentiator between those telcos that thrive and those telcos that fade. So we are going to hear, first of all, from our six expert witnesses, one in turn. So I'm going to ask our first expert witness, Nathan to come to the podium and deliver the first statement. Nathan Rader is VP service and Capability Exposure at Deutsche Telecom. Over to you Nathan.

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (01:18):
Alright, wow. Monetizing network APIs. Where to start? I mean it's the question that everybody asks right over and over and over again. When is it going to happen? If I think about it, I mean about four years ago, if I recall, I stood on a stage in Barcelona and announced the Kamara project to standardize the APIs. And at that point in time we got a question that was, what's the odds of success of this? And I gave it a 50 50 chance. I think Kamara now is solid done. I would say that a hundred percent Kamara projects working. We're standardizing APIs, but that doesn't mean we're monetizing or selling the APIs. And I think we're right now still only maybe a slightly more than 50% chance there. I'd give it maybe 60% chance of being successful in monetizing because we have to think about what is holding us back Still, it's not that one single telco will be able to monetize these APIs all by itself.

(02:14):
We need to work together as a group. There's starting to be that work happening. The GSMA is driving us together. We're changing our mindset as a group of telcos. So normally we would sit there and think, oh, we're competitors. We can't even be in the same room. Or if we enter the same room, one of us will burst into flames or be hauled off to jail or who knows what happens. But now actually we sit there on calls together, talk about the APIs, talk about joint customers and actually try to jointly sell these because in the end, we actually are not competing with each other in the market on network APIs, the competition still on SIM cards and things like that, but we have for delivering network APIs, the footprint that we have. And so when it comes to that, we've got to change. That's one problem working with our mindset.

(03:02):
The second problem is that so far what we've learned in this journey is that the developers don't know what to do with the APIs yet. They don't know what a network API is. If you think about that, somebody thinks that it's about hyperscale networks, not telco networks. And so we're looking at least from the Deutsche Telecom point of view to start doing a little bit of a pivot. Instead of walking out and saying, here's our API product, please buy it. We'd love for you to monetize it. We're now looking and saying, well actually we need to give you a solution. We need to solve your difficult problem because you're not able to figure out how to use those APIs yourself to solve that problem. So if we can do that for you, we'll make a product geared towards the vertical, geared toward the use case that you want to sell and ensure that then we can enable that. But of course we still need to have the coverage. We still need to ensure that we're driving the growth and there's plenty of players out there that are doing it. We have things like adona, we have the open gateway pushing, we have the various CPAs players and I think that as we go forward we will start to see some successes and at least from our point of view, we are starting to see some money. Thank you.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (04:19):
Thank you Nathan. Great, great opening statement to get us going. So if I invite my next guest to the podium, Lasha and Lasha Tabidze is the group Chief Digital Operations Officer at VEON, Lasha.

Lasha Tabidze, VEON (04:33):
Thank you. Thank you. And good morning everyone. After yesterday's discussion about cloud data sovereignty today. Great discussion from the morning. So about the APIs and API monetization, like what I can say from VEON's side and me representing VEON right now. First of all, what was rightly mentioned first is like API. It's obvious we have to have the network APIs because it's kind of a technology solution, how fast we can expose our intelligence to the developers and to the enterprises. But second one is more important. What I see is that the intelligence we have on the network, how good we have this intelligence trained, identified different use cases which we can bring out to the world. So Vion, we are like what we're doing and what we achieved. We're blessed from the point that we have like 150 million telecom customers and more than 150 million digital applications customers from FinTech to right hail link healthcare, et cetera.

(05:38):
And you can imagine, so internally we use lots of these API connections between the network, API, telecom, different data APIs and the digital assets we have. But it was rightly mentioned. So can we monetize it? Yes, of course. But are we ready to just bring it to the market and technically of Tamara protocol? We also have this in different operational companies, but when you put this out, no one I fully agree, knows how to use it and how to put a product on top of this. Maybe some enterprises do, but developers don't. So our mission is first of all what we were discussing like yesterday and today that look, telecom's data and the amount and diversified data we have is still siloed. So first we have to learn how to really aggregate this intelligence we're sitting on. And then of course like bringing out APIs, working in partnership with developers, big enterprises to create the proper use cases.

(06:37):
And this connection happening through the API, of course it's kind of giving building blocks into the hands and making things faster because until now we do it through different private integrations to the enterprises with the API out there will be more and more use cases and product solutions created and the value created to the markets. And last but not least, where I want to say we need to change of course because as of today, all the telcos, we generate huge revenues on huge margins with current connections we have and we have to be very open on that, right? With A two P or different kind of businesses we do, it's like pure margins. And when we speak moving from there to the APIs, we are moving to value creation which will be less in margins, but which will be really changing how the operations are happening within the countries. More intelligent products coming to the markets and coming to the public and the customers in the market. So thank you Asha. Thank you very much.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (07:40):
Very interesting. Thanks very much. So let's get next speaker. Raman, please come to the podium. Raman Mistry is channel partner engagement lead at the GSMA Open Gateway.

Raman Mistry, GSMA (07:49):
Thank you. Good afternoon. It's great to be here. So the industry has invested billions into the 5G network. So the question arises, it's not how fast will our networks become, but how fast can we innovate and create tangible value from those networks. Traditionally, networks have been a closed ecosystem with proprietary interfaces, very complex engineering that's gone on. But these are barriers to developers and the industry needs to realize that they're sitting on some incredible value, a real gold mine of data that developers want to access and tap into. And there's data such as location data or quality of demand. And all of these can be then realized in terms of innovative new solutions. And within GSMA, within the open gateway and our partners such as TM Forum Amplify and the Linux Foundation with the Kamara project, we've created an ecosystem here that's really helping to move the industry.

(09:08):
Today we have 292 network operators that are aligned around Open Gateway and that represents over 8% of the mobile connections globally. And within that ecosystem, the area that I work in is with channel partners and we have almost 60 channel partners as well, which range from hyperscalers to global system integrators to CPASS vendors and to aggregators. I'm pleased to say that Aona recently joined as part of that initiative. And aligned to that, we also have an initiative in GSMA called Fusion. Now, fusion Open Gateway is more of a supply side initiative and fusion is where we work with enterprises to define the services that they want to develop. So we are getting some large enterprises to write statement of requirements to say, you know what, these are the services that I'm looking for and there's a dollar value enabled through those services. So if you can enable those APIs, we'll go away and build it and there's a dollar value attached to that. So we're really excited about that. We've got lots of momentum around that. We've got a load of bunch of use cases and case studies which are openly available on the GSM website and we are looking forward to working with operators, channel partners, enterprises and developers to really build out this ecosystem. Thank you.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (10:45):
Thank you very much. Thanks very much for sharing that information with us. That's great. And our next speaker, Aaron, if you'd like to come to the podium, Aaron Partouche innovation director at Colt Technology Services. Aaron,

Aaron Partouche, Colt Technology Services (10:58):
Good morning everyone. Are we ready to serve machines, not just humans? For that network will not be anymore pipes. They will become platforms, they will become practical. So the next big consumers of our networks won't be people. They'll be algorithms, AI agents, autonomous systems, network APIs can unlock capabilities with some hidden but information that we have in our networks like identity, latty and trust, they change the game from selling boundaries to monetize interactions. We could easily imagine an API call that become at the end a micro transaction with a FinTech app that needs to have a call trust or fraud detection, API, and they might pay 0.1 euros per call or even less and multiply that across thousands of applications. And you can see the scale. The real challenge isn't the pricing model, it's about exposure. It's about how we can touch these ecosystems and it's about being ready to have a kind of AI driven orchestration to connect with these ecosystems. MCP, let's say servers and so on. So how do we scale this? So far, we see to Path Federation through GSMA, open gateway TM Forum, amplify that are offering standardized PI across operators for global reach and developer simplicity and differentiation where we could potentially add some unique APIs based on the advent features like for instance, offering a sovereign path through an API. So some telco will probably select one path, others will blend both federation for scale differentiation for margin.

(13:29):
We see also the CPAs ecosystem that are trying to develop and support this exposure strategy and make this API discoverable and simplify the integration with the developer ecosystems. The winner will be those who make APIs easy to find, easy to use, easy to monetize in this world, latency identity and trust will become the new currency. Those that don't may become invisible. Thank you. Thank

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:05):
You

Aaron Partouche, Colt Technology Services (14:06):
Aaron. Thank

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (14:06):
You very much. Great, thanks Aaron. And let's get our next expert witness up Kristian Toivo, Kristian is executive director at the telecom Infra Project. Kristian,

Kristian Toivo, TIP (14:17):
Thank you and hi everybody. And we've been talking a lot about monetizing both yesterday and particularly this morning. And I think this project about with network APIs is the essential test. Are we as an industry able to monetize? So what is needed to monetize network APIs? In my mind it's basically how do we accelerate application development? How do you do that? You basically have to have full coverage and I think that's something we are getting basically in every market where you want to launch this, you have to have the essential operators all launching at the same time making sure that we can provide the service to any user regardless which operator they are connected with. The other thing is we have to obviously expose the meaningful right capabilities from the network. I think right now we started with the easier ones, which are not touching the network very much.

(15:18):
I think the acid test will be, are we able to expose consistently those capabilities with which the actual network assets are showing their performance and benefit. And last but not least, we actually need an ecosystem. Everything is an ecosystem play, partnership play. We heard that this morning in the other discussions as well. So why is this important for the industry and the operators overall? I think this takes us on one hand back to figuring out what are the essential assets we have, which is the network, the customer, knowing the capabilities of the users out there, knowing their location, knowing their identity. And it requires when we want to monetize it requires to seriously think about how do we make this available not just as a technical exercise but in ways where maybe the individual component of revenue per breach exposure is limited, but we think in volumes and scale and to create scale, we need the right partnerships.

(16:32):
And I do think we see the progress already. Now. We had a month ago we had TIPS annual conference and we had a session with representatives including some of the colleagues here on stage talking where we are. And I was super impressed by where we've come. We have operators working together, we have organizations, GSMA, TM forum, others working together, we have aggregators solution providers that I do not Nokia all working to make this happen. And why I think this is so important because once we make this work with the network APIs, it also prepares us for that next step which is monetizing AI at scale as an industry which we talked about and we'll continue to talk about. Thank you

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (17:21):
Kristian. Thank you very much indeed. And if we can have our last expert witness please. Andy Tiller. Andy is EVP member products at TM Forum.

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (17:33):
Thank you very much. So monetizing network APIs requires global standards and it requires a global ecosystem. Two things that TM forum authority believes in. So we're working closely with GSMA with kamara, with Adona Bridge Alliance and other industry peers to promote open gateway. Our members are building the so-called operate APIs. So these are essentially enabling the kamara service APIs to be monetized as products sold through marketplaces. Our we have a joint certification program with GSMA to guarantee interoperability for players in the ecosystem. We are regularly featuring API monetization at our events last week in Bangkok. We heard use cases from across Asia where network APIs are being monetized successfully and our catalyst program proof of concepts creates an environment where we can explore what's possible with more advanced APIs that are coming online. So we're believers, but why do we believe reasons to believe? I think firstly because these APIs can actually provide a better customer experience than some of the alternatives.

(18:47):
TikTok is saying publicly that they were surprised by the increase in uptake, the increase in customer satisfaction they saw when they switched from SMS based to factor authentication to seamless authentication using number verification sims swap and know your customer APIs are making a credible difference in the fight against fraud. And more advanced APIs like quality on demand can make a difference to customer experience for gamers, for video streamers, for wearers of AR glasses for business users who need particular network characteristics. And this initiative has maintained its momentum much longer already than previous attempts we've had in the industry to monetize APIs. So that's all positive, but we do have a way to go. So transactional APIs require very high volume in order to pay back significant money and to some extent are cannibalizing existing SMS revenues. More advanced APIs like quality on demand are much more complex to roll out both technically and commercially. And in some jurisdictions which take a very strict view of net neutrality, they may not even be legal. And crucially, I think we still have to understand how much value and customers put on this, how much they're willing to pay and how much of that money will trickle down through CPAs and aggregator layers to the operators. Nevertheless, I believe if we get this right as an industry, we can make the world a better place. I really believe it is worthwhile just how much it's worth is still out for debate. Thank you Andy,

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (20:37):
Thank you very much. Thank you to all of our expert witnesses for those statements. And to answer Andy's final point, I'm sure we will be debating that very, very soon. Before we go into our discussion and debate though, we do need another motion and before I hand over to Graham, I will say that we spent extra effort this year trying to craft motions that would split the audience 50 50 and we've done a pretty good job. We've

Graham Wilde, Three Group Solutions (21:08):
Done a good job so far. Yep. So this motion guy, this motion ladies and gentlemen is network APIs are fundamental to telco business model success. And Chris is speaking for,

Chris Lewis, Lewis Insight (21:23):
I love the fact that the audience is split. I love the fact that we're all confused. The reason that we're all confused is that the fact that the language you used API, we think about this technical interface, the way in which we're presenting it to the industry, we've never spoken the language of other parts of other industries. We've only ever spoken our own language. Just think of the, someone mentioned ISDN earlier, we've confused people with our language. What APIs are doing is they're uniting the industry. We already heard about some examples where in certain countries the operators are coming together to deliver that consistent API to prevent fraud, to deliver more security. And increasingly as Andy said, to move us and Kristian said to move us towards that quality experience. So the language that we're using is much more broadly the IT language which appeals to a broader sector.

(22:15):
It also doesn't just appeal to developers. This mythical developer community there are developing people within the businesses, there are people doing their own development. So the capabilities that we bring to the market consistently actually really change the thinking of the telco. That it's not just about providing connectivity, it's what people are doing with that connectivity. Some of the advantages the connectivity brings, it does bring location, it does perhaps need some quality of service. It certainly needs security requirements. So we're gradually beginning to expose the things underlying connecting to the network that actually shape the applications, the way we run our personal and our business lives. And of course we've been, we keep referring back to AI and the role of ai. AI needs those digital hooks in order to bring the power of all those models wherever they may be, wherever the edge may be, but bringing it into that coherent view of the world.

(23:08):
So I think actually retrospectively we're actually seeing that the API idea, the concept, the delivery is actually uniting the industry, whether it's on a national level to do with sovereignty, whether it's on a global level as Andrew just said in terms of the standards. But it's beginning to shape the way the industry actually begins to talk to the partners in the ecosystem. So rather than trying to control the ecosystem, which is what we tried to do as an industry in the past, we are beginning to provide those digital hooks which allow ecosystem partners, whether they're vendors, whether they're channels, whether they're the customers to actually bring the power out and not just in one big fell swoop, but actually choose the different nuggets that are suitable for a particular environment. So I'd ladies and gentlemen, the motion is clear APIs are opening up opportunities for the business model of telcos to expand, to spread its relevance to spread the power of connectivity throughout the ecosystem. I would encourage you to vote for it.

Graham Wilde, Three Group Solutions (24:08):
Well ladies and gentlemen, despite the fact that I'm speaking against the motion, I am actually very keen on APIs. So a couple of years ago I decided to open up some APIs into myself and it's going really well. Okay, so I've got an API that allows you to decide what clothes I wear and my wife's a big user of that one. I've got an API that allows you to decide what I do at work and my boss is very keen on that having seen what happens when I just do my own thing. He's a big believer in telling me what to do

Chris Lewis, Lewis Insight (24:45):
Now you mean?

Graham Wilde, Three Group Solutions (24:47):
Yeah, I've got an API on what political views I should have and my daughter's very keen on that and another API that decides what music I should like and my son's very keen on that so I've got other ones as well. Basically anything's up for grabs apart from when I go to the toilet. So speak to me afterwards. The rates are very good if you're interested. The second reason why I quite like APIs is because I work for Hutchinson, we own lots of mobile operators and we actually offer APIs very much as some of the speakers have been describing here. And they are successful. I mean we offer a sim swap, we offer a number verification, we offer location and so on and so on across multiple mobile operators and it's fine, it's fine, it's okay. And there's probably more things we could do and as Kamara is standardized and more things become available, yeah sure, sure there's more we can do. But the motion says they are fundamental to telco business model success. And I put it to you ladies and gentlemen, that they're nice to have but they're not fundamental. The fundamental thing that we do is self connectivity. We make billions from it around the world. This isn't going to move the dial back much. Okay? So please, I urge you to put the red part up and vote against the motion. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (26:11):
Thank you Graham. Thank you Chris to very good arguments for and against the motion there. I'm going to be thinking over the next 30 minutes as are all of you. I am sure before we get to vote though, we are going to have a chat and a discussion about this session, about the debate, about the motion about APIs and a reminder to our online audience please, you can see the emotions on the site. So do vote as well join in. Right. So before I come to some questions I've written down here, I'd love to go to the audience and see if there's a question. Oh in the back right corner there. Nepotism at work in the back right corner. Thank you.

Andrew Coward, Kirin Solutions (26:50):
Thank you. It's not well Andrew Howard recently left IBM running when consulting company at the moment. So I'm going to take it as red that to Chris's point, that APIs are kind of precursor and necessity for ai. But what are the panelists companies doing with AI that they think is intrinsically linked to the API specifically around MCP and A two eight?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (27:19):
Thank you Andrew. Who'd like to feel that first Lasha

Lasha Tabidze, VEON (27:22):
I can start.

(27:24):
First of all, I think the topic about what is fundamental in telco, I think there are many fundamental things we need to change and first of all, it's interoperability and open ecosystem into the digital world. Specifically to the topic of ai. We have a very good case in Kazakhstan just recently when we developed and launched Kazak, KLM and I'm speaking about 70 billion parameters, not just simple API. And now what we've done that this ai, like what we developed internally, we gave to the government, we gave to the public as an open source and it sources through the a i the network data and the data securely we can drive into the AI because look overall telco, when we speak about and when we speak about network intelligence, yeah, sometimes we just speak about calls and just locations. But when you look at this holistically, how much profiles you can create out of this intelligence, we know transactional data, we know travel data, we know everyday data.

(28:28):
And if you give me a chance in just under one minute, I can give you an example. For example, in one of our countries when we started to open up the API, the network, API together with one of the insurance companies, we sit down together and we developed kind of a use case that in this country, like car insurance was mandatory, but most of the cases incidents were happening on the bigger roads where the tall gates are. And together with them we developed kind of aggregated platform. When a car is approaching the tall gate, they're getting for the fraction of money to upgrade their insurance for the trip just between two cities and the take rate was so high, I'm speaking about millions of people. So we operate in big scale countries, millions of people starting to use it within a week. And then we tapped into this business together with these partners.

(29:20):
It was a monetization of the API. But with the AI coming up, I think it'll be more and more important because as it was rightly mentioned by the panelists and everyone. So I truly believe that API is a seamless connection and we cannot speak about world of the future with the same integration pattern telcos used to have with the enterprises. We have to go this way. But once again, I want to underline so that we have to first learn our data better because whoever worked and here are the experts from telecom world, our data is still very siloed. We just have 20, 30% maybe understanding of what use cases or what patterns our data has. But first we have to learn and then if you have the seamless connection through the APIs, you can do any business because usual suspects about quality of demand and fraud detection and et cetera. They are also evolving fraud detection and alternative credit scoring from Telco last year and this year, this huge difference on how much it evolved. So my answer would be it's very important, especially if we speak about agent AI from the telco and someone else speaking to each other, you need the API connections.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (30:37):
Thanks. Pleasure. Who's going next? Nathan, you

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (30:41):
Go next. Yeah, I generally agree. I mean I think if we think about AI we have to split it into a few bits. So clearly we're not going to let some randos agent go wild on our network. Ain't going to happen. We may let our own go wild inside of our own network. That's a different story. But I do believe that when it comes to the APIs, that'll be sort of the gateway into the network where we can kind of control what agents from the outside are able and allowed to do in our network to keep it. I will keep it running so somebody doesn't just go in and crash it, kill it or whatever. So I think it's going to be quite important to the AI world.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (31:21):
Thanks Nathan. Raman.

Raman Mistry, GSMA (31:23):
Yeah, I just want to follow up on both of those comments. I totally agree with that. Obviously Agentic AI, MCP and even agent to agent protocols are coming more to the fore as well. We've got a body of work going on within actually GSMA looking into this. We had a recent panel discussion at Mobile World Congress Doha last week where we had Google, Infobip, Vodafone and MTN talking about this. So no doubt it will have an impact. I mean the story still yet to involve as to how it work. Will MCP servers be consumers of Kamara APIs as kind of things are still yet to be flashed out, but it's definitely going to be a key driver in the Industry.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (32:14):
Thank you very much Aaron.

Aaron Partouche, Colt Technology Services (32:17):
The number of IP endpoint are exponentially increasing because of the number of autonomous systems and agents that are growing. So indeed what we are looking at is how we could interact a bit more with the AI workloads it'll require to make it very practical. So this is also how we are rethinking our NAS proposition that should be fully integrated with the ai, with the AI layer. So indeed for us, we have started this journey and we are still at the beginning of this journey to try to validate that all the information that we make available and this API that we make available makes sense for the AI agent and it'll evolve. So even if what we will do today will evolve because there will be, and this is what we discussed in the previous panel, there will be more and more distribution of the AI with different type of language and different type of requirements. But it means that the AI agent will need to know the exact latency they will have between A and B. And so this is what we have started, but we are at this, we have to start this journey because these are the new consumers. The new consumers will not be us, it'll be machines. So we have to start to understand what would be the requirements. Sure.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (33:46):
Thank you very much Aaron. Andy

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (33:48):
Yeah. Two quick things I think one is agents need to interact with existing systems and processes in order to actually get anything done. And MCP is the interface standard APIs are very, very important for that. You can write the tools for MCP once and everybody can use them instead of having to do a lot of customization. Secondly, behind the scenes, in order to make sure that services delivered through network APIs are profitable, you need automation, everything. Provisioning a network slice, assuring it, settling for it has got to be fully automated and AI is becoming essential to make that happen. So I think AI is very relevant to what we're talking about for

Kristian Toivo, TIP (34:30):
Those two reasons.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (34:30):
Thanks Andy and Kristian.

Kristian Toivo, TIP (34:31):
Yeah, so in our conference that I referred to a month ago, we ran a hackathon together with AWS on developing agentic applications. And I think the tool sets and the capabilities are mind blowing. I mean if you haven't seen what people can do in a month or in a weekend, you will be so surprised. Now obviously like somebody said, we will not let that run loose in a network. So you need two things. You need data onto which you can train those applications that LLM that is then kind of interacting with the agents and you need to be able to invoke mechanisms that are safe controlled within guardrails and APIs. Network APIs will play a role in that. There are other mechanisms as well, other APIs as well. But I think that's the future where we're going. That's why I think it's so important that the industry succeeds with both exposing and launching the network APIs as they are today, what those applications will be that use those APIs still to be seen.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (35:37):
Sure, Kristian, thanks for much indeed. Thanks for the question Andrew. Now I believe we've got a question at the back end of the lights there. You've got to guide me where is, oh there you are. Thank you

Sam Iskander, Dell (35:48):
Sam. Speaking from Dell today around network monetization and API and Kamara was part of it, ADON and others, but also what is the view now around, you can see the CPS and a two a agent coming, but also there is consortium called and or around interworking where you are bringing all the software company trying to create as well, unifying all the Asian to Asian things. So will that force all the operators to give all the APIs free? Because those guys have a lot of money. It's all the software where the developer sits. So by default they will push the telco operator to open this, give it free and it'll be like killing camara. What is the view here?

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (36:35):
Okay, thanks

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (36:37):
For the question here on the Monetizing panel. Nathan, do you want

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (36:41):
To Yeah, I'll take that. So I mean listen, if we give it all for free, we might as well just pack up as an industry and go home, right? Because I mean we've already done that with unlimited data. We can't put that back in the bag once it's out. If we do the same thing with network APIs, we'll be right there and we'll be sitting complaining in 10 years time going, oh well we're still just the dumb pipe. So I think that it really comes back to us as an industry to ensure that we are monetizing the value of the things that we have and not letting it become a commodity.

Lasha Tabidze, VEON (37:18):
Yeah, first of all, agreed, that's a great question, but agree with my co-panelists here because we cannot be pushed for this one to give for free and as an industry where we can win. And I'm always trying to give good examples. For example, right now with the network API, many companies are speaking just about quality on demand and there are some enterprise cases with the private networks and et cetera. But mainly what telecoms are considering this as a cell, as a standalone telecom operators is for example, someone like some influencer making some streaming. And if you want to make a better streaming, you click the button and you get your RPU high. If we as an industry will stand together like any tiktoks of this world will pay us as an enterprise and they will have this button within their applications. This is a different game. So that's why I'm saying API game, each operator today in the world is playing somehow someone more successfully, someone not. But when we speak about the industry, this is the great value creation possibility for us where we can fight back and really demand for some rules. If these applications want to be successful for the customers, then this will be the new game rules so we get a big bigger portion of the pie. So that would be my answer to that. Thanks Asha Ram.

Raman Mistry, GSMA (38:46):
Yeah, I just want to add to that the GSMA have recently ran a survey of its members, it's a value survey. So looking at things and some of the key findings from that is there is demand, there is value in that in terms of monetization and it's primarily being driven by things like anti fraud and authentication APIs. There are key drivers and monetization value from there, but we're also starting to see things emanating around quality of service QOD type of use cases that are also coming to the fort.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (39:26):
Thanks very much that Aaron?

Aaron Partouche, Colt Technology Services (39:28):
Yeah, I think we are still at the beginning of this ecosystem who will find the best model to make this PI discoverable and make a business case that works. But I agree with Raman that today we have some APIs that have currently value. We have some demand from customer asking us to qualify a call and ready to spend money per call. So for them they want to because this is a real value. So we will probably focus on APIs that we can easily monetize at the beginning and there will be maybe over model, over business model that could be created in the future if we look at API that will trigger an impact on the network. We have a programmable network, the way we can monetize is more on the traffic usage of our network. So it may be a bit different. So reason why I was saying pricing model I think is not really the main issue for, I think it's how we can be really well exposed.

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (40:38):
Thanks.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (40:38):
Any more Comments on this or you happy?

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (40:40):
Maybe just a quick point. I think we need to be realistic in our industry about pricing, right? Because if we are too greedy, if we overestimate the value then we will incentivize developers to find alternative solutions. Alternative solutions are available. We've seen that in the past with network with location APIs for example. So we've got to be realistic but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be positive.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (41:12):
Thanks Andy. Great question to ask. We're going to get another question from the front from Neil.

Neil McRae, HPE Networking (41:16):
Hey, I dunno, reassuringly expensive always worked for me, but army isn't it time we moved away from talking about APIs to talking about, hey customer, how do you want to use the network and what's the best way for you to use it and here's all the great things the network can do. So you mentioned network slicing. No one wants to buy that they want to buy the thing that network slicing uses and I can help but feel we're stuck in our own bullshit cycle of APIs, APIs, APIs when we should be pushing, actually we work with a customer here in the UK where network API allowed you to do network as a service and build a sovereign network that you could actually go through the process of validating was truly sovereign in code and it's those sort of things that are going to sell this and monetize it.

(42:11):
Just stand up and saying I feel like we're the billboard guy with network APIs buy here. No one's going to buy that. It's just not realistic. And then also, and I just tested this with chat GPTI grabbed one of the APIs, use chat GPT and knock up a bit of vibe coding and the APIs are now, they're important that they're there from an exposure point of view, but the fact that they are there is now, well anyone can use 'em from any point of view. So we need to figure out, it's like, oh, we've got this great new CPAs service for managing large teams events and of course it's got a network, API, of course it has. That's the world we need to get to. Otherwise I feel that this is just us selling our own virtue rather than selling the value that the customer sees.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (43:04):
Thank you. Neil, kind of applause there. Can I put this straight to Nathan because you really started off on this.

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (43:11):
Yeah, I fully agree. I don't need to even say much. I mean, yeah, I think that that is part of the problem is that we've exactly been saying by our network API and everybody goes, I don't know what that is. And then we say, oh, but then there's all these great parameters and you've got to now figure out what the legal scope and purpose is and it's like, yeah, okay, I don't know what to do. So yeah, we've got to make it simpler. We've got to solve a problem and that's what, at least from the DT perspective, we're going to start doing because we can't just continue to hope somebody pieces it all together on their own.

Raman Mistry, GSMA (43:46):
So the problem Raman, yeah, just to follow up on that, I think I mentioned it in my opening pitch. What we are also doing with our fusion initiative in GSMA is really asking enterprises what is it? It is a demand driven approach. What is it that you need from the network to enable you to build the services where you see some innate value and that helps to feed into and drive into the open gateway ecosystem. Whether it means that the change an existing kamara, API or is a brand new kamara API that will support the service that enterprises and developers by implication would want to use. So I think you have to look at it from both a demand side as well as not just saying, here's a bunch of APIs and go and see what you can build from it. It needs to be also have that demand side driver. We figure out how

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (44:43):
To generate the map, right? Everyone missed that with no microphone? I'll just repeat that. We figure out how to generate demand. Kristian.

Kristian Toivo, TIP (44:53):
Yeah, so I think this comes back to what was discussed earlier today as well. I mean how do you actually solve the real identify the real problems and solve them and its application developments is integration focusing on vertical industries? I don't think the telcos can do it on their own. This is a ecosystem partnership play and that is when you start talking about outcomes rather than just capabilities.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (45:19):
Great. Kristian, thanks so much. Any other comments?

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (45:22):
I'll make one comment though. But I think the generating demand side of things, I don't think that the telcos are going to be able to generate the demand, right? I mean I think there's a lot of partners out there that actually are understanding what the problem is. We need to identify the right partners. I think that maybe we've put a little focus on it from the telco side. We've sort of looked towards the traditional CPAs players thinking, oh those are going to be the place where the demand is driven. I don't think that's really the case. They still are trying to sell SMSs. I think that there's a lot of niche specialists out there that will be able to drive the demand more than the telcos will and we've just got to identify them and chase them down.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (46:08):
That is interesting. Thank you Nathan.

Aaron Partouche, Colt Technology Services (46:09):
Aaron also agree in fact, I don't think that we will have to generate demand. I think the demand will, we will come. I mean we have clear request today. Even us we are not able to answer to that because we are not maybe ready. As I said, I was talking about this called trust request. Can you qualify your call? So now we are working on that. So it's more how can we simplify, how can we be well exposed? And when a developer needs to know specific information, oh I can get this information and I get it. So indeed this is more, it was why I was talking about exposure strategy and I agree with naan and there are actors that are much better than us be there and that would be known by the application developers. But I don't think that we will be able to generate demand at least that our role is to just say, oh great, look what we have developed, you should use it. No, it'll be used because they will need it.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (47:16):
Aaron, thank you. Did you want anyone want to come in on this one? Are you okay moving

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (47:20):
The question? I think to the point about who generates the demand, the customer experience generates the demand. If anyone who's tried playing a game standalone game on a virtual reality headset, it's quite fun. Not that great, but compare it to PCVR where the applications running on the powerful gaming pc, the graphics quality is so much better. The immersive experience is so much better, but of course it relies on the network. So there is value in creating that better customer experience. Translate it to the vr ar glasses. Yeah, you can do so much with the thing locally, but you can do much more if you have a powerful server end that is delivering much better quality of experience. That's where the demand will come from, from those experiences. Once people experience it, they will want that. The trick is how we actually monetize the value that the network's delivering in that the quality on demand when it's needed.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (48:16):
Thank you Andy. This was going to run and run I'm sure, but I want to get some more questions in if I can. And Diego's right at front with the box.

Diego R Lopez, Telefónica (48:22):
Yep. No, it's precisely about this, about generating demands in all field tests as we have made regarding this, we have tried to generate an ecosystem not to address directly the end user or direct customer because this is something that is true. We don't have a direct connection with a user that is willing to play FIFA, whatever the edition with other friends in a purely fair environment. But the guys that are selling that to them, they have this connection. So the idea is to facilitate this network Ps to say, well look whatever you were doing in the past making whatever the tricks, that's much easier. If you use our APIs it would be easier. That implies, well you're going to make your customers pay the customers of the service, pay you because it's going to be better or the experience is going to be even more enhanced. And then a part of that goes to us and we are monetizing not directly talking with the end user but creating an ecosystem of others that are benefiting for this and while trying to share somehow that's what we have done and what we keep experimenting with this and well there are some cases around that. Asha, did you want to comment on that?

Lasha Tabidze, VEON (49:42):
Yeah, just very quick one what you just said, that's where I was saying actually that API is giving this possibility but we need to do these cases and that's where when I made this example of TikTok and quality on demand, but the same I can say for example advertising vertical advertising industry, we all understand that very soon third party cookies will be blocked and through the network API, so much intelligence we can sell to the advertising industry. It's unbelievable. We are already doing this in Vion, like we started this Uzbekistan now selling to seven different markets in the world. So I fully agree and I think this is the most important part and I really want to underline this once again. So we still look at the network API or network just as a channel, not this room, but overall I mean in the telco industry, but the intelligence, what is beneath this network data and how many use cases we can create.

(50:40):
We still don't know it. We have to use ai, we have to use new people, not just the telco people, but to make the mix, get new people on board, get new partners on board, and then it's a gold mine because just two use cases, which was just one example and we discussed advertising or quality on demand or any other, this is already billions of dollars which will be shifted from the customers when we still try to monetize our just data connectivity with higher ARPU and faster speeds on the enterprise and developer side so they can have better products and innovate more on their side of the products and we will be the intelligence behind it to give it to them. So that's where I wanted to add.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (51:25):
Thank you Asha and Raman.

Raman Mistry, GSMA (51:27):
Just one point to add on that some of the demand may come from regulatory frameworks as well. So for example, age verification, which is generally driven by legal requirements and I know in the UK at least the operators have coalesced together to look at how that age verification API and Kamar will. So there'll be some demand drivers that will come outside of just the normal process and even maybe come from government or regulatory frameworks.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (51:59):
Thanks so much. Any more comments? So checking will field another question. Okay, let's field another question. Francis,

Francis Haysom, Appledore Research (52:07):
A good API and probably a monetizable API is one that somebody uses at the end of the day. I've heard a lot about global availability. I've heard a lot about standardization here, but with the exception of last year, I've heard very little about solutions and people using it. I've had the great pleasure of going to a conference called Kubekon for the last few years and it's interesting seeing a completely different developer environment. Nobody's talking about standardization, they're talking about hackathons, they're talking about a new innovation, they're creating APIs, they're seeing if people use APIs. Are we in danger of really approaching this from the wrong thing because we come from a standardized basis. A lot of these things don't need to be globalized. The Kazak example is a good example. It's for Kazakhstan. Are we in danger of not seeing what the APIs that people want to use working with people and seeing if they work rather than just we're constantly waiting for a standard to deliver that one. Is that our problem?

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (53:12):
Okay, thanks Francis. So we bash the standards again.

Aaron Partouche, Colt Technology Services (53:17):
Go Aaron. No, so I

(53:20):
Think, sorry. No but, I will be, it's reason why I was distinguishing between two type of path. One is a federation with APIs that may be we need to know the location of one and we need a global reach and we all provide services where in this federation of APIs we may have may need the standards. And there is for me a second category that is more for differentiation that may answer to specific demand for specific vertical specific country. And this is where we'll probably make a bit more margin because it's more specific. But indeed we are at the answering to solution to use case. So I totally agree with you and we should not only blindly focusing just on standard, we need to understand the use cases and we may have different path. I mean today I was talking about two different path, may have several after, but this is what I see took so far.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (54:23):
Thanks Aaron. I think we all want to come in on this one possibly. So Nathan, let's come to you next. I think you were jumping in there.

Nathan Rader, Deutsche Telekom (54:28):
Yeah, I guess my view on that is that we're not standardizing them, right? I mean that's the whole reason that we launched Kamara and the Linux Foundation. It's not a standards body because if we did do it in a standards body, we wouldn't have a single one standardized because we'd still be talking about it for the, I mean it's almost five years now since we launched tomorrow. So we've got at least another couple of years before we would've solved that. So I don't think that that is the problem. I think the problem is that we as telcos don't know really how to use it. We think that we just want to continue to write 'em like standards and we want somebody to just say, here's a set of requirements, please make it happen. As opposed to doing an open source manner where it's like, look, if you've got an idea, go throw the code in there and implement it. You don't have to get agreement with practically anyone. I mean there are sandboxes that are set up, sandbox incubator projects that can just go. I think the point you're trying to make, which I do agree on, is that we shouldn't be selling those standard APIs. We should be selling a solution that the customer is a problem they're going to solve.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (55:36):
Okay, Nathan Raman, then we'll come to ship Raman.

Raman Mistry, GSMA (55:39):
Yeah, just to add to that, to your point about hackathons, the GSA were at the Indian Mobile Congress in October and they ran a hackathon. There we're fantastic participation and the teams were only using Kamara. It was supplied through Nokia's network as a code platform and they were only allowed to use kamara based APIs. And some of the innovation that was going on was fantastic. The winning team had a location, location-based service solution. So you walk past, there's an e-commerce, you walk past a store and you get pinged with offers, et cetera. And that, and they did this in two days in Barcelona. We'll have a big theme around hackathons and the DEFCON that's going on there. Again, the emphasis will be about creating real world solutions using the open gateway kamara standards to do that.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (56:40):
Sure. Great. Thanks very much. And Lasha,

Lasha Tabidze, VEON (56:42):
Great question from different angle, and I think we all have to think about this, my answer to that, even if it's standardized, but we stick with the innovation that what I was speaking about then this standardized protocols can help different players coming to the new markets. That's where I see the potential. If we innovate good and the world knows this is a new stuff like Tamara or whatever protocol, this is really new stuff to the world outside telco. If people know how to innovate on that protocol and we are good enough with the solutions to give it to them. For example, today you have iDrive in one of the markets tomorrow, Uber coming there, then you have it. So that's why I don't see it as a problem, but very good question. It becomes a problem if we still stick with just like, here's the API do whatever. Let's innovate. I'll go to solutions.

Andy Tiller, TM Forum (57:35):
Thank you Andy. Yeah. Yes, of course not all applications require global scale. Actually anti-fraud in Brazil is a good example where open gateway is successful locally for one market, but many do. And that's where, and scale is really key to unlocking a lot of new value, I think. So we already discussed the example with the AR glasses developers, applications for the AR glasses and not going to want to do a separate deal with each operator. Their customer could be on any network anywhere in the world. We are laying the foundations with the standards, with the ecosystem to enable developers to innovate on top of that. So we may be concentrating on that, but it's essential to the foundations to monetize in the future.

Guy Daniels, TelecomTV (58:23):
Andy, thank you very much indeed. Well, I think it's a good place for us to end. We're about a minute away from lunch. So thank you very much for your contributions and the questions. We're going to turn now to the motion and remind ourselves what the motion was. The motion was network APIs are fundamental and Graham stressed the word fundamental. Fundamental to telco business model success. So are you for the motion with Chris or are you against the motion with Graham? So please paddles up and let's have a vote. Oh, send another tricky one. I think Chris has won. Do you know what? I think the greens. Greens have won. The greens have won at this time. So well done. Greens, the motion is carried. Thank you. Thank you very much everyone. Thanks for our guest. It's lunchtime now. Lunch at Buffet. Lunches. Serve next door for about an hour. The gastronomic delights there await you. So please make your way next door and we'll see you here at 2:00 PM Sharp for the afternoon sessions. Thank you very much.