Telecom Giants Form 5G API Supergroup

Leading mobile operators agreed to create a standalone company tasked with coordinating their API efforts. It should reduce fragmentation in apps and services in collaboration with Ericsson and Google Cloud.

Vodafone, AT&T, Verizon, Bharti Airtel, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefonica, Singtel, Reliance Jio, Telstra, T-Mobile US, and America Movil are teaming up with Ericsson to create the venture. The company will work to deliver common APIs and so broaden the field of app and service developer platforms they can access.

The operators aim to have the venture up and running in early 2025, with the group to hold a 50% stake and Ericsson the remainder. In a joint statement, the operators emphasized the new company’s work will be in keeping with the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative and be founded on a deep understanding of developer and enterprise needs.

The operators plan to open access to so-called hyperscale companies, communications platform-as-a-service providers, system integrators, and independent software vendors. The set of common interfaces will be based on existing industry-wide CAMARA APIs, they stated, referring to an open-source project for developers driven by the Linux Foundation in collaboration with the GSMA. Ericsson’s Vonage unit and Google Cloud are set to partner with the company providing access to their ecosystems of millions of developers.