Open APIs and cloud partnerships provide central themes for opening of MWC 2023

CLOUD

One of the key topics that emerged from the first day of keynotes at MWC today in Barcelona was around the question of monetization. How is the telco industry going to leverage developers and the cloud community to generate new sources of revenue in a globally connected world?

The telco industry took a step toward monetization on Monday with the announcement of GSMA Open Gateway, a framework of universal network application programmable interfaces that will provide universal access to operator networks for developers.

“As the telco moves into a ‘techco’ model, where they sell bits of the technology to developers, when they say they’ll charge other people for it, it’s by going through open APIs like the Open Gateway announced today,” said Chris Lewis (pictured, right), founder and managing director of Lewis Insight. “Developers and other third parties can come in and take those chunks of technology and build them into their services. This is a complete change from the old telecom industry.”

Lewis spoke with theCUBE industry analysts Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin at MWC 2023, during the keynote analysis in an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. He was joined by Sarbjeet Johal (left), founder and chief executive officer of Stackpane, and they discussed central themes from the keynotes and new opportunities for both cloud providers and telcos. (* Disclosure below.)

Pursuing new models

The move to open APIs on telco networks highlights the need for both modernization and new revenue in a highly competitive market. Johal has previously noted that 46% of telcos don’t believe they will make it to the next decade. This is driving the pursuit of new models.

“The competition is closing in on them; telcos are competing with telcos and competing with cloud providers on the other side,” Johal said. “The smaller ones are getting squeezed. They are telling the cloud providers they are not paying their fair share. ‘You are generating so much content that traverses the networks, but you’re not paying for it’.”

In return, cloud providers are forming new partnerships in the telco world at a rapid pace. Today, Google Cloud announced three new products to help telcos build, deploy and operate hybrid and cloud-native networks. And both Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services Inc. also unveiled new services designed for the telco industry.

“They are very much getting in bed with the telcos,” Lewis said. “The standards are coming, the partnerships are coming, the cooperation is coming, but it means that telcos can’t dominate the sector like it used to. It’s got to play ball with everyone else.”

Seeking standards

A focus on standards represents a key opportunity for the telco industry. The cloud world has evolved in a stack-driven model, which has become more of an issue for enterprises seeking to navigate multicloud solutions.

“On the cloud side, we are fighting over how to consume multicloud without having standards,” Johal said. “If telcos get together and create some standards around IoT and edge computing, people will flock to them. The market is looking for that solution and it’s an opportunity for telcos.”

There is an opportunity for the entire tech industry in another area, one that involves the vision-impaired. Lewis, who has registered blind throughout his career and is an active user of assistive technologies, has a simple message for technology providers.

“What I’m trying to get across to the industry is to think about inclusive design from day one,” Lewis said. “Whenever you are designing any service, my call-to-arms for people is to think about how that is going to be used and how a blind, or deaf person, or someone with physical or cognitive issues might use it. If you don’t build it in from scratch, you really frustrate a whole group of users.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the MWC 2023 event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for MWC 2023. Neither Dell Technologies Inc., the primary sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE