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Rather than positioning network APIs as a direct monetization opportunity, Dr. Chathurangi Wickramasinghe, SVP Magenta API Capability Exposure, Deutsche Telekom sees them providing a foundational trust layer in future digital and AI services.
Joanne Taaffe
Why Deutsche Telekom is focusing on network APIs' role in trusted services
When the telecom industry launched the GSMA Open Gateway initiative in 2023 much was made of the potential for network APIs to generate new revenues. McKinsey went so far as to estimate that the network API market could unlock around $100 billion to $300 billion in connectivity- and edge-computing-related revenue for operators.
Since then, communications service providers (CSPs) have experienced the reality of collaborating to build standardized network APIs that are easy for aggregators, developers and other partners to use at scale. In parallel, they also have been working to deploy trusted AI systems and services. As a result, Deutsche Telekom has broadened its view of how network APIs deliver value.
“Network APIs are no longer a monetization opportunity for connectivity providers beyond connectivity,” says Dr. Chathurangi Wickramasinghe, SVP Magenta API Capability Exposure, Deutsche Telekom in an interview with TM Forum's Insight. “The right positioning for network APIs ... is the potential to be the foundational trust layer for the whole digital economy, including the emerging AI journey.”
It’s a view that presents network APIs as an essential mechanism in developing and delivering trusted services rather than as star products in their own right.
“Customers are not buying APIs. They do not wake up in the morning and say ‘I want to have APIs.’ They buy outcomes,” Wickramasinghe emphasizes. “And the main objective is trust at scale and network content ... which we expose through APIs. Fraud prevention, improved authentication, low customer friction, location assurance, productive digital journeys. This is what customers want. They want to see the outcome.”
She gives the example of fintech companies using network APIs to verify high-risk transactions. “All the fintech companies need to know is, can I trust this journey?” Network information allows them to verify a customer’s number and geographical location, or to check whether they recently swapped a SIM. And to work it requires inter-operator collaboration within a wider ecosystem.
“In this scenario, we do not, as a CSP, sit in front of the customers. We need companies like Aduna that aggregate [standardized, CAMARA-aligned network APIs] for the whole market because fintech providers are not interested if it only works for Deutsche Telekom customers.”
Looking forward, Wickramasinghe sees agentic AI creating new uses for network APIs to deliver trusted services, based on Deutsche Telekom’s own experience of building AI systems.
“We always look at the network capabilities which we expose through APIs and compare it the external and internal AI services and products we deliver to see how we can strengthen the trusted layer,” she explains.
When it comes to tasks such as authenticating the identity of AI agents, Wickramasinghe believes that “we can give the context and also the support permissions,” using network APIs.
“We need to educate the market ... [on] capabilities we can bring to the party in the context of AI autonomous systems [and] that network APIs actually bring the reliable trusted signal for them.”
Again, this will require collaboration so that solutions work in a standardized manner, regardless of who operates the underlying network.
“We need to sit together, whether with service providers or system integrators, and find out what are the best combinations of the solutions we can offer in order to generate outcomes like secure digital onboarding, better authentication,” she says.
For now, however, Wickramasinghe concedes that CSPs need to make it easier for software application developers to integrate and expose network capabilities in third-party products and services. This in turn will make life easier for aggregators.
“The developer and customer experience ... is very critical and must be a very central part of our way of working,” emphasizes Wickramasinghe.
“As an industry, we have made strong progress, but there is still room to improve, notably when it comes to simplifying access to network APIs and creating clearer documentation.”
Particularly if network APIs are to achieve the commercial repeatability that allows them to scale.
“We need to [ensure] ... scalable support models, the simple developer experience, and combine these all things together to find commercial models ... [with] our customers,” she says. “Because a network API will only become a true growth engine if we combine global interoperability, experience, robust content, identity management, and scalable commercial models to create the best outcome for the customers.”
