Altice Portugal, Deutsche Telekom, Orange and Telefónica outline the opportunities they see with network APIs, and the hurdles that lie ahead.
Telcos have been building momentum around network APIs over the past four years, said Noel Wirzius, product manager for network APIs at Deutsche Telekom (DT), and are now at a point where they are really starting to look at how exposing network functionalities to third parties can be spun up into real revenue opportunities.
Speaking during a network API-focused panel at Telecoms Europe's Telco to Techco event, Wirzius noted that following the establishment of the CAMARA open source project in 2022 and the launch of the GSMA's Open Gateway initiative at MWC in 2023, network APIs had morphed into a dominant topic at this year's MWC.
Indeed, while not quite rivaling the all-encompassing theme of AI, network APIs accounted for a sizable amount of chatter at the event, also partly thanks to Aduna, the network API joint venture created by Ericsson and a group of telcos.
Now, Wirzius said, we are at the point where "we need to scale … we need to bring in the expected revenues from all of this. But there are still some hurdles" to overcome, from a technical, customer or industry perspective.
Shortening the loop
Also on the panel were David del Val, global director, Open Gateway at Telefónica, José Pedro Nascimento, chief technology officer at Altice Portugal (MEO), and Otilia Anton, director of Orange LiveNet at France-based Orange.
Orange launched the LiveNet unit just ahead of MWC 2025. Much like DT's own Magenta API Capability Exposure (MACE) division that was established last year, LiveNet was created as a distinct business unit to drive the development and monetization of network APIs.
According to Anton, a number of positive steps have already been taken by the industry, including the collaborative efforts embodied by Aduna, CAMARA and Open Gateway. However, if the first identity-related use cases that are being seen in banking and insurance are to be scaled to other industries such as media, entertainment, distribution, and transportation, the "feedback loop" between CAMARA and the customer needs to be much shorter, she said.
"We have been working a lot on engaging developers, engaging enterprise, working with partners to be able to create a necessary level of awareness on the endless opportunities that network APIs can bring to the customers," she said. "But in addition to that … I think we need to be very conscious about this feedback loop and adapt our proposal pretty much real time to the customer."
Anton said the aim is to co-develop use cases with customers and then work on replicability and "the scalable issues across geographies."
"I think we are on the right path as an industry towards that and we see very strong support from partners and peers to be able to fast track these options. But we are humble on the learnings and try to adjust to the real-time demand of the customers in that way, and that gives us the opportunity to tap into potential use cases that we haven't imagined before," she said.
Here, Anton provided the example of a company called Certifeco that certifies documents for B2B purposes, especially civil engineering.
"It was really interesting to see how network information can strengthen confidence and reduce fraud in the civil engineering domain. So that was something that we couldn't have imagined before, and every day we see cases like that in which we see new, creative ways in how customers can leverage network data for their business," she said.
Identity matters
Identity-related use cases for security and authentication in areas such as banking are expected to remain a key driver in the coming years. Telefónica's del Val also cited customer data and quality on demand as areas where "I'm seeing clear indication from customers that this is what they are demanding first."
Anton said telcos need to be pragmatic and take on use cases "that have a lot of traction, as on the identity one, but also strive together to work on the more advanced ones that will really mark a change" as 5G standalone networks become more widely deployed.
At the same time, she said she sees a lot of demand for connectivity insights, "how applications can use network data to improve the customer experience, adapt to real time and as well for features like location, quality on demand. And I think that when we move into the space from network information to network configuration, that unlocks a completely different opportunity for the telco ecosystem and for the customers, because there we can also work both with partners as well as with our product teams to expand the experience on advanced 5G SA use cases."
Nascimento added that while banks and financial institutions remain the key industries for now, "we see that we are moving, for instance, to entertainment with, for instance, the location APIs to a lot of use cases in terms of location. And so we are promoting, we are investing … and we are looking at this landscape in terms of standardization and trying to get as much as possible in that field."
Other emerging domains include entertainment and media applications, healthcare services, industrial IoT and smart cities, population density tracking and network optimization for millions of IoT devices.
Notably, CAMARA has just published its second official release, CAMARA "Meta-release Spring25", containing 13 new and 23 updated APIs that have been "vetted for quality, consistency, and stability through rigorous release management processes."
Initial versions of new CAMARA APIs that are ready to be implemented by network operators are: Blockchain Public Address, Connected Network Type (including Subscriptions), Customer Insights, Device Identifier, Device Swap, Know Your Customer Age Verification, Know Your Customer Tenure, Number Recycling, Region Device Count, WebRTC Call Handling, WebRTC Events and WebRTC Registration.
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