GSMA: How developer collaboration is driving innovation in the telecom industry
We caught up with Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence to find out his take on the trend for closer collaboration between telcos and commercial developers to better utilize network features through Network APIs.
The Shift developer conference was held in beautiful Zadar in Croatia in September. The event is an opportunity for software developers and IT professionals to come together to learn about new technologies and processes, extend their networks, and have a bit of fun at the same time.
What has this got to do with telcos you might ask? Rather a lot it turns out.
With the development of Open APIs, telcos are increasingly relying on developers to engage with them to tap into the many features that they are making available.
We caught up with Peter Jarich, Head of GSMA Intelligence at GSMA to find out his take on the why and how of this exciting collaboration.
The GSM Association (GSMA) is a non-profit trade association that represents the interests of mobile network operators and organizations across the mobile ecosystem and adjacent industries. The GSMA’s vision is to unlock the full power of connectivity so that people, industry and society thrive.
The changing relationship between telcos and the development community
Telcos have always understood the benefits of working with developers so they could leverage the capabilities of the telco’s network.
However, for devs the value proposition didn’t always add up. Sure, a single telco may have millions of end customers, but they are still only a subset of the total market. Any development work done to incorporate a feature from a particular telco had to be replicated multiple times because every other telco had a unique API.
This made life for the developer extremely complex as they attempted to scale their applications across different networks.
This is where Network APIs that are standardized across multiple telco networks become invaluable. CAMARA is an open-source initiative led by the Linux Foundation and GSMA, which aims to make Network APIs more standardized, innovative, and accessible to developers worldwide. So instead of integrating a separate API for every Telco, devs can work with a single unified standard.
What CAMARA does is enable devs to build once and then use many times across telco networks.
As Peter points out – “Scale is what drives the business”.
When we talk about Network APIs we are talking about the ability to easily tap into telco network capabilities find out (for example) someone’s location, someone identity, to deliver quality on command to ultimately accomplish an end goal.
Peter Jarich
Head of GSMA Intelligence at GSMA
- How developers can use Network APIs to enrich their own applications
- Number verification: Verifying phone numbers is easy with Network APIs. You can match a phone number with an IP address in seconds, reducing fake accounts and boosting security with features like OTP replacements.
- Device location: Want to send users offers when they’re near certain stores? Network APIs can fetch user locations and set up geofencing, allowing you to deliver timely, location-based notifications.
- SIM swap detection: Concerned about fraud? Network APIs can help you track SIM swaps, alerting you when a number has changed cards—a common tactic in fraud attacks.
- Device status: Keep users informed by checking their device’s connection or roaming status, ensuring they always have a smooth experience.
- Quality on demand: Facing performance issues? Network APIs let you adjust latency and bit rate in real time, so you can enhance your app’s performance on the go.
- Know Your Customer (KYC): For industries needing secure verification, Network APIs simplify KYC processes. You can quickly verify user identities and even auto-fill data for a better user experience.
And what about the challenges?
Peter concedes that opening up their networks does raise some challenges for telcos, but that the benefits make it worthwhile and it is necessary to ensure the long-term success of the industry.
Of course, whilst operators need to collaborate with other operators to ensure the interoperability of their networks, they remain competitors at the same time. Striking this balance isn’t new and telcos recognize that collaborating on initiatives like CAMARA is key to helping the wider industry flourish.
Another challenge is deciding what is the best way to go to market – whether that be directly, through channel partners, or by working with a cloud communication provider. Spending too much time on this decision may delay getting return on investment, and risk falling behind the competition. What Peter recommends is an agile approach where telcos move quickly and try multiple approaches to see what works best for them.
The GSMA’s role in the responsible adoption of AI by telcos
With AI making such a huge impact on the telco industry and its customers, we asked what role the GSMA was playing in helping its members to incorporate AI effectively and make informed decisions about the best way to use the wealth of data that they collect.
Peter makes the point that network operators have historically not been particularly agile when it comes to the adoption of new technology, like AI, but the reason for this is that there is so much resting on them if they get it wrong. Risk to their customers privacy and to their brand if there is a data breach or the AI makes a mistake.
The GSMA recognized early on that there was a gap in proven best practice advice for telcos when it came to AI adoption. With so many unknowns, they undertook a project to publish an Ethical AI Playbook to help set its members on the right path when beginning their AI journey. It serves to educate telcos, helps them to reduce risk, and introduces benchmarking capabilities so that telcos can measure their AI maturity against other members, and work towards making ethics a core part of industry business practices.
“Responsible AI and ethics are something that need to be included in any conversation about ROI.”.
Peter Jarich
Head of GSMA Intelligence at GSMA
How developers can help to shape the future of communications
The benefit of industry events like the Shift conference and MWC Barcelona is that they provide the telco industry with a platform to educate developers about new network capabilities that they can leverage when building their own applications.
Peter uses the example of the adoption of RCS, which Infobip has been a key part of, and the success that has been had by commercial developers in incorporating the now ubiquitous channel to take advantage of its rich media capability.
Peter makes the point that while people often think of developers as the cool folk in hoodies working in isolation on the next world-altering technology, the vast majority of developers in the commercial sector are writing code to satisfy a use case in the most efficient, cost effective, and elegant way possible. Basically, they just want to achieve a goal, and network APIs are a key tool to help them do just that.
With telcos working on exposing their key network functionality and developers bringing these features to life in the aps and solutions that they build – the result is a collaboration that benefits society as a whole.
