A study for global mobile trade association the GSMA has found steady progress in its Open Gateway framework – designed to provide a mechanism through which the service providers opening up access to their network capabilities to developers and enterprises through interoperable network application programming interfaces (APIs) – with increases in participants and “remarkable momentum” in South and Southeast Asia.
Launched at MWC 2023, GSMA Open Gateway is designed to help developers and cloud providers enhance and deploy services more quickly via single points of access to operator networks. This is achieved via common, northbound-service APIs that expose mobile operators’ network capabilities in a consistent, interoperable and federated framework. The GSMA sees the move as representing a paradigm shift in the way the telecoms industry designs and delivers services in an increasingly API-based world.
Indeed, the GSMA and the project’s partners regard quality of service APIs as a key feature of future networks to offer users bandwidth-intensive, low-latency, real-time services. The APIs will be designed to provide federated access to global network capabilities with the intended result of simplifying service delivery and enabling faster time to market.
The GSMA open gateway: State of the market, H2 2024 report revealed that operator interest in the Open Gateway initiative has continued in the second half of this year, with a further 14 operators having signed up since June 2024. This brings it to a total of 67 mobile operators, representing 75% of the global mobile market share. This, said the GSMA, underscored the industry’s commitment to leveraging common APIs.
The geographic spread of operators has continued to tilt towards China and Asia in total and relative to their mobile subscriber base, while operators in Africa have been slower to adopt. The report suggested that supply-side activity would be key to enabling the potential for scale through common APIs that developers and other channel partners can tap into. It predicted that 2025 would be all about monetisation and proof points from commercial deployments.
The study also found that the framework’s API library has expanded to grow the range of options for developers, vendors, hyperscalers and other aggregators. Yet even as channel partners such as Bridge Alliance and Comviva have joined the initiative, providing support for distribution, there has been less activity from the big hyperscalers. The GSMA stressed that these companies are key to unlocking the developer audience, presenting an important six months ahead.
Other findings included 60% of enterprise buyers rating security and fraud as extremely important to their projects, ranking them above 5G, fibre, cloud and edge computing. Developers also identified security as their top priority, indicating alignment between the two groups. Just over two-thirds of developers said they had a clear understanding of network APIs, though this was lower in China. Developer knowledge surpassed 70% in most regions, however only around a third of developers in China claimed a clear understanding.
Security and fraud mitigation were revealed as the most popular applications, with APIs such as SIM Swap helping helps businesses detect and prevent SIM swap fraud by providing info on recent SIM changes associated with a mobile number. The use of APIs for edge compute and other network-related functions is also growing, as is the payments area. Developers similarly rated these capabilities for their own apps, with around 40% citing edge and payments – the highest after security – as most attractive to enterprises.
Assessing the trends revealed in the report, Henry Calvert, head of networks at the GSMA, said the focus must now be on delivery. “There are 23 APIs in the library covering use cases including anti-fraud, quality on-demand and edge compute. We want operators, the developer community and others to take full advantage of these capabilities. The case studies shown in this report give on-the-ground detail. There is a window of opportunity, but this will not stay open forever,” he remarked.
“We want to encourage more operators to participate, and a deeper set of engagement with developers and other distribution partners, as that collaboration is needed for success. It also requires visible markers of progress, including the number of operators, API usage and the extent to which usage is monetised. I’m excited about the opportunity ahead of us and the work required to deliver on the opportunity.”
