According to McKinsey & Company, network APIs “are critical to companies seamlessly tapping into 5G’s powerful capabilities for hundreds of potential use cases, such as credit card fraud prevention, glitch-free videoconferencing, metaverse interactions, and entertainment. If developers have access to the right network APIs, enterprises can create 5G-driven applications that leverage features like speed on demand, low-latency connections, speed tiering, and edge compute discovery.”
Network APIs have been discussed before in the communications world, but they’re having their time in the sun once again with the evolving network ecology of digital transformation, cloud native, 5G, AI and more. They bridge the worlds of networks, IT, application development and, potentially, satellite. But only if they can be standardized.
That’s the key. Most previous network API projects in telecom have been driven by individual operators seeking to achieve competitive advantage for their networks. When apps only run in one system however, there’s little incentive for third party developers to deliver innovative products.
Instead, the burden falls on the network operator to develop their own apps. Although telcos employ many, many software programmers around the world, they are not optimized to be product developers. Their core business is to provide reliable connectivity services.
What’s more, as we’ve seen for decades in the software world, standard APIs enable enterprises in vertical industries to create their own apps to leverage tech platforms. That’s where competitive advantage helps both the customer and the network operator the most. For example, what if an airline could directly manage and optimize the communications links to their aircraft to ensure the best possible customer experience for their elite customers? A standardized API working across all of their satcom providers could give them this capability.
This month, the GSMA and TM Forum announced they are collaborating on a complete set of APIs to monetize network capabilities using TM Forum’s widely adopted Open API standards and the Linux Foundation’s CAMARA APIs. There’s still a distance to go, of course, but there seems to be real momentum and it’s exciting to see this kind attention.
The satellite industry is too small a part of the global telecom fabric to go it alone on APIs. We should carefully watch what’s happening elsewhere towards achieving standards and participate where we have a common interest in common APIs. The upside is tremendous for advancing interoperability and adding value to satellite network services.
