There is a shift occurring in the telecommunications sector as network operators develop network-as-a-service (NaaS) offers—essentially, offering the extensive capabilities of their wide-area wired and wireless networks as programmable platforms to support public cloud and private enterprise applications.
App developers and system integrators (SIs) are leveraging network intelligence, scale and speed in ways that were previously unavailable using a new set of standardized application programming interfaces (APIs) being developed by the telco industry.
Two immediately relevant areas for developers are financial applications—particularly those focusing on anti-fraud measures—and network specialization for demanding application needs, such as Industry 4.0 use cases.
While anti-fraud applications use APIs to simply extract information from the network, the performance-focused network specialization APIs, such as the quality on demand (QoD) API, can be used in conjunction with location or geofencing and network performance data APIs to build more dynamic and sophisticated applications. These use cases could include anything from autonomous and remote-controlled vehicles to logistics and advanced manufacturing.
In some cases, especially for information-based API requests, the implementation and use of them are relatively straightforward both for operators and the developer community. For this reason, anti-fraud use cases are seen as a near-term opportunity.
For the more complex performance-oriented API service offerings to succeed in the coming year, however, the industry must adopt a more holistic approach involving a wider ecosystem for operators and developers to fully harness the power of network APIs.
Network APIs offer a programmable interface for an application to either ask for information from the network or control how the network behaves as a way of making the application perform better. Network operators provide these capabilities at a price, depending on the value of each API to the application owner or end user. In this way, operators can generate new revenue streams, helping them to justify investing in the latest network technologies.
Imagine you’re building an anti-fraud feature for a fintech app. With location APIs, your app can cross-check the user’s device location with the location where a transaction is being attempted. If a user’s phone is reported by the network as being in New York, but the transaction is initiated in Tokyo, an API can trigger an alert or request extra verification from the phone subscriber. These APIs can be embedded directly within your app, creating a seamless layer of security for the finance company as well as the owner of the phone.
In the more complex network specialization use case, such as those promoted today in the healthcare, autonomous vehicles and advanced manufacturing fields, a QoD API enables your application to dynamically request bandwidth or prioritize critical tasks. It ensures that the application receives the network quality it needs, like the ultra-low latency needed in many automation scenarios, even in congested conditions.
It can be combined with other APIs to build quite complex applications that, for instance, might provide enhanced network service to a robotaxi if it is operating in a geo-fenced area set aside for robotaxi operation by the regulator.
For some, the idea that network operators can monetize their network investments by using APIs to expose network functions feels like old news. However, there are several reasons to believe this time will be different.
For starters, LTE and 5G networks are increasingly software-based and cloud-native, and unlike previous network generations, 5G has been specifically designed to enable network functions to be exposed in a systematic way. Thus, today’s networks can be more easily programmed to respond to the needs of the applications running over them.
Recognizing this, telco industry standards groups like the GSMA, TM Forum and CAMARA are standardizing APIs for a select group of network functions. The aim is to achieve such a level of standardization that developers can create just one application that can be applied and used in any network environment without having to deal with the complexity of the underlying network architecture.
Those groups recognize that unless developers can use APIs in a generic and repeatable way, the economics of many use cases won’t fly. This shift in mindset is a big step forward compared to previous network API efforts and one that others can build on.
Looking at the demand side for API services, there is a growing need in 2025 and in years to come for network specialization to support new generations of applications. In consumer services, for instance, extended, virtual and augmented reality could use an API like QoD to ensure very low latency as well as high bandwidth, which are critical to a positive user experience. Specific vertical enterprise use cases also present a real, long-term addressable market. Although many of them remain conceptual today, there are a significant number of Industry 4.0 use case proof of concepts (POCs) and trials going on, especially in the private wireless space, that are showing the way forward for more generic public operator implementations in the future.
To look more closely at the demand-side drivers, we should start with the financial vertical, where the emphasis is on anti-fraud applications. According to analyst firm STL Partners, this market for “identity APIs” represents a $4.6 billion opportunity in 2024.
The three relevant APIs defined by CAMARA are “number verify,” “SIM swap” and “KYC – Match and fill,” with the latter providing privacy-compliant customer information.
As we’ve seen, these APIs essentially provide financial services companies with more precise ways to ensure that a customer communicating with them using a fintech product on a mobile device is who they say they are and is the one initiating the transaction. They don’t replace current methods but provide even greater security by accessing information about the customer that is unique to the network operator. STL Partners estimates that this market, including the “KYC – Match and fill” API, will be worth $14.6 billion by 2030.
There are two kinds of use cases that can profit from the more ambitious network specialization APIs. The first are macro-scale B2B applications that fully leverage the wide area reach of telco networks. Examples include IoT applications in the logistics area that would allow for tracking of goods in transportation, and remote and autonomous vehicular systems and drone control. These kinds of applications will need continuous streams of information and high reliability given the mission-critical nature of the use cases.
The other set of use cases are localized but still cover a wider area than a private network could. Large train yards, canal systems and harbors are good examples of local wide area coverage that could be supported by a public network operator.
Port terminals are already experimenting with private network versions of this. Remote controlled and autonomous operations of gantry cranes and automated guided vehicles (AGVs) have been providing quay-to-yard container transfer for several years and terminal operators have recently been experimenting with LTE and 5G to automate the entire workflow of data, video and private radio services.
The other possibility is hybrid private-public network solutions. A logistics warehouse or single port terminal might employ a private LTE/5G network and complement it with a wide area 5G network slice that would provide coverage for the entire truck fleet.
Despite the implementation of 5G and other software-defined, cloud-native systems, there are still a lot of underlying legacy technologies embedded in telco networks that are not going away anytime soon.
While there is a tremendous amount of work still to do on the network operator side, this is also true on the developer side. Many developers familiar with using APIs in their enterprise or consumer applications might nonetheless find it difficult to implement some of the telco network APIs being standardized today. There is a need to educate and support the developer community on the use of network APIs. Fortunately, there are a number of API aggregators meeting this need.
In summary, even with a standardized API, there is a tremendous amount of work that has to be done on the supply side by the telco operator, telco vendors and third-party system integrators to ensure that the API will work with a given telco network. Additionally, on the demand side, the API has to be packaged in a way that makes it simple for non-telco and enterprise use case developers to utilize.
In 2025, we expect to continue seeing the emergence of the network as a distributed platform and the decomposition of telco services, which will entirely shift the paradigm towards NaaS and new possibilities for application developers.
It is an ambitious and profound vision of where tomorrow’s networks will go, and one that will require the coordinated actions of all the ecosystem players operating in a holistic way to make it a reality.
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