Latest / The 5G Podcast with Fexingo: Wireless Networks, Carriers, and Mobile Infrastructure / How Network APIs Are Turning 5G into a Developer Platform
Transcript
- Lucas: There's a phrase I've been hearing more and more at telecom conferences lately — 'network as a platform' — and for a long time I thought it was mostly marketing fluff. Luna: Right, every carrier says they want to be a platform company, but their core business is still selling data buckets and voice minutes. Lucas: Exactly. But something actually changed in the last eighteen months. The GSMA, which represents mobile operators globally, launched something called the Open Gateway initiative. And the centerpiece of that is a set of standardized network APIs — application programming interfaces — that let developers access specific 5G capabilities. Luna: So instead of a developer having to negotiate individually with every carrier to get, say, low-latency access, there's a common API they can call once and it works across multiple networks? Lucas: That's the vision. And the project that's actually building those APIs is called CAMARA. It's hosted under the Linux Foundation, and it's a collaboration between operators, vendors like Ericsson and Nokia, and cloud providers. They've already released several APIs for things like device location verification, number verification, and quality on demand. Luna: Quality on demand — that's the one that lets an application request a guaranteed level of latency or throughput for a specific session, right? Lucas: Exactly. A concrete example: there's a German industrial automation company called KUKA that makes robotic arms for factories. They ran a pilot where a remote operator controlled a robotic arm over a 5G network. Using a standard CAMARA quality-on-demand API, the application could request a latency budget of under ten milliseconds for the duration of the task. Without the API, the robot would share the network with everything else in the factory — video surveillance, employee phones, barcode scanners — and latency would spike unpredictably. Luna: And the API basically reserved a slice of the network for that session? That sounds a lot like network slicing, which we talked about in episode seven. Lucas: It's related but different. Network slicing is the underlying infrastructure — the operator provisions a virtual end to end network with certain characteristics. The API is the front door that lets an application request a slice on the fly, without manual intervention. Think of it as network slicing as a service, exposed through a REST API. The developer doesn't need to know anything about 5G core network architecture. They just call a function: requestLatency. Luna: That's powerful. For a long time, the carrier network has been kind of a black box for developers. You get a SIM card, you get an IP address, and that's it. If you want guaranteed performance, you have to buy a dedicated line or negotiate a special contract. APIs flip that. Lucas: They do. And the business opportunity is significant. McKinsey published a report last year estimating that network APIs could generate between ten and thirty billion dollars in revenue for operators by 2030. That's not huge compared to their overall revenue — most carriers do tens of billions annually — but it's high-margin revenue from enterprise customers, which is exactly where the growth is. Luna: Thirty billion — is that total addressable market or actual revenue they expect operators to capture? Lucas: McKinsey frames it as revenue opportunity for the industry, not necessarily captured entirely by operators. Some of it goes to aggregators and cloud platforms that resell the APIs. But the operators are moving fast. Ericsson has its own Network API platform, which they launched in 2023 and have already signed up over a dozen operators. Nokia has something similar called Network as Code. Luna: But we've seen this movie before. In the early 2010s, there was a big push for telecom APIs — I remember AT&T's API platform, Verizon's — and they never really took off. What's different this time? Lucas: Three things. First, the networks are actually programmable now. 5G's core is built on cloud-native principles — containers, microservices, orchestration — so it's much easier to expose capabilities through APIs than it was in the 4G era, where the core was mostly proprietary hardware. Second, the standardization is happening globally through CAMARA, so a developer writes one API call and it works across multiple operators. That was a huge barrier before. And third, the ecosystem has matured. Cloud providers like AWS and Azure are actively participating. AWS has a service called AWS Telco Network Builder that integrates with operator APIs. Luna: So the developer doesn't even have to go to the carrier directly — they can call the API through their cloud provider's console. Lucas: Exactly. And that matters because developers already live in those cloud environments. They don't want to log into a separate carrier portal. So the distribution model is much more developer-friendly. Now, there are still real hurdles. One is that operators are historically reluctant to cede control over their network resources. Exposing an API that lets an external application request guaranteed latency means the operator has to guarantee it — and if something goes wrong, the SLA is on them. Luna: And the business model is still fuzzy. Do they charge per API call? Per session? A monthly subscription? Do they share revenue with the cloud provider? Lucas: All of those models are being tested. Vonage, which Ericsson acquired for six point two billion dollars in 2022, is essentially an API aggregator — they bundle carrier APIs and resell them to developers. They charge per API call, with tiered pricing. Some operators are experimenting with flat-rate access for enterprises. But there's no dominant model yet. The other challenge is that the API use cases so far are fairly narrow. The most popular CAMARA APIs today are for number verification and SIM swap detection — useful for fintech and anti-fraud, but not exactly the kind of transformative use cases that would drive massive adoption. Luna: Number verification — that's the API that lets an app confirm that the phone number the user entered matches the SIM in their device, right? That's already used by some banks for two-factor authentication. Lucas: Exactly. And it's a legitimate use case, but it's not going to move the needle from ten billion to thirty billion. The real money is in quality on demand and location APIs, because those enable new classes of applications — autonomous vehicles, drones, industrial automation, augmented reality. But those use cases are still early. Most of them are at the pilot stage, not deployed at scale. Luna: So the infrastructure is being built, but the killer app hasn't arrived yet. That's reminiscent of the early days of 4G — the network was ready before Uber and Instagram came along. Lucas: Exactly. And the operators need to be patient. But there's pressure from investors to show that 5G is more than just faster downloads. The capex for 5G has been enormous — billions per operator — and the return on that investment has been underwhelming so far. Network APIs are one of the few levers they have to unlock new revenue streams without building more towers. Luna: Speaking of new revenue — if today's tech conversation gave you something usable, maybe a new way to think about your own business or just a clearer picture of where telecom is heading, that's exactly why we make this show. We deliberately don't run ads on these episodes because we want the content to be the whole point, not interrupted by someone trying to sell you a CRM tool or a mattress. Lucas: Yeah, and listener support is what makes that possible. If you value having a commercial-free tech podcast you can count on, the link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. That's it — no subscription, no tiered membership. Just a way to say this matters to you. Luna: And it really does help. So back to where we were — one of the most interesting developments I've seen is how the operators are starting to bundle these APIs with edge computing. Because low latency alone isn't enough if the application has to round-trip to a centralized cloud. Lucas: Right. That's where the real synergy is. If you combine a quality-on-demand API with a local edge compute node — say, a server inside the operator's central office — you can get single-digit millisecond latency end to end. Several operators are now offering 'edge as a service' bundles that include both compute and network APIs. Luna: Who are the early customers for those bundles? Is it still industrial players, or are we seeing gaming companies, streaming services? Lucas: Mostly industrial and logistics so far. There's a warehouse automation company in Japan that uses a local 5G network with a real-time location API to track inventory drones. The drones need both low latency and precise positioning, both of which are exposed through APIs. Gaming is a potential use case — imagine a cloud gaming service that can request a latency guarantee for a streamed session — but that requires the player to be on an operator that supports the API, which is still rare. Luna: So there's a chicken and egg problem: developers won't build for APIs until there's broad coverage, and operators won't invest in coverage until there are applications. Lucas: That's exactly right. And the CAMARA project is trying to solve the coverage part by making APIs interoperable across operators. As of early 2026, they've released nine standardized APIs, and over sixty operators have committed to supporting them. But 'committed' is different from 'deployed.' Some operators have only signed a memorandum of understanding, not a binding agreement to actually expose the APIs. Luna: Which operators are actually furthest along? I know Vodafone and Deutsche Telekom have been vocal about their API strategies. Lucas: Vodafone launched a developer portal called Vodafone Developer in 2023, and they've been running hackathons to encourage usage. Deutsche Telekom has a similar portal and has been working with BMW on a connected-car use case — using a location verification API to confirm a vehicle's position for automated tolling. In the U.S., Verizon has a '5G API Marketplace' that includes network slicing APIs, and AT&T has an API platform through its Network on Demand service. But globally, the most advanced is probably Telefonica, which launched a dedicated API business unit in 2024 and has already signed up several enterprise customers in Spain and Brazil. Luna: It sounds like the pieces are coming together, but there's still a gap between the vision and the reality. What's the one thing that would accelerate adoption the most? Lucas: I think it's a single, high-profile application that goes viral — something that every developer wants to build, and that only works because of a network API. We haven't seen that yet. The CAMARA APIs are still mostly used by telecom insiders and a few forward-thinking enterprise developers. Once a startup or a major tech company ships a consumer-facing product that relies on, say, the quality-on-demand API, you'll see a rush of interest. Luna: Maybe the Apple or Google of the world could be that catalyst. They have the developer relationships and the scale to make an API usage mainstream overnight. Lucas: Possibly. Apple already uses carrier APIs for its 'Find My' network, but those are internal. If they exposed something to third-party developers, that could be huge. But for now, the industry is still in the building phase. The foundation is being laid, and it's a lot more solid than the API efforts of the 4G era. But it's going to take another year or two before we see whether this truly becomes a new revenue stream or just another also-ran.