APIs are the building blocks of how the world of technology works: used to integrate applications with each other, API calls make up the majority of global internet traffic these days. Now, telecoms carriers, often cut out of the march of tech but now looking for more ways to monetize next-generation networks like 5G, want to get in on he act.
Today the GSMA — the association representing the world’s major mobile operators — announced a new initiative with 21 carriers called Open Gateway, a framework to provide universal, open-source-based APIs into carrier networks for developers to access and use a variety of mobile network services like location or identity verificaiton and carrier billing, which previously would have been more complicated or more expensive (if not impossible) to integrate and use. The plan is to be able to kick off more development using APIs in applicati...