Access to telecom networks through APIs
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) are an integral part of modern software design and the foundation of microservices architectures. In the last year, telcos across the world have been enhancing their networks and offering APIs that provide access to network services, giving observability into and programmability of telecom networks. Under GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative, telcos are standardizing the definitions of these APIs so applications using these APIs are portable across different connectivity providers and different geographies. Some examples of capabilities that developers can add to their applications using these APIs include: 1) checking the last time that the SIM card associated with a mobile number has changed (SIM Swap API), 2) performing seamless authentication of a mobile device with the mobile network by requesting a check of the number (Number Verification API), 3) checking connectivity status for a user equipment, such as whether it is roaming (Device Status API), 4) requesting stable latency (reduced jitter) or throughput for specified application data flows between application clients and servers (Quality on Demand API), 5) discovering the optimal edge cloud node for the application to be hosted on (Edge Discovery Service API), and many more1.