Follow us
Click here to setup your social networks

Adopting the Open Gateway APIs

with Alex Szomora, Senior Go-To-Market Project Manager for GSMA's Open Gateway initiative

Alex Szomora, Senior Go-To-Market Project Manager at GSMA, shares how GSMA's Open Gateway Initiative enhances interoperability between telecommunications carriers, helping businesses improve authentication and fraud detection, as well as simplifying access to telecommunications services. Alex shares her career path and how she came to be in her current position. The conversation also covers the objectives of the Open Gateway Initiative and the related Camara project under the Linux Foundation. The challenges and opportunities in adopting the APIs are discussed, along with the future of the initiative and the potential for new services and APIs.

See more about Open Gateway and the Camara APIs

What is GSMA Open Gateway?

Welcome to a paradigm shift in the way the telecoms industry designs and delivers services in an API economy world.

https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/gsma-open-gateway/what-is-gsma-open-gateway/ 

GSMA Open Gateway API Descriptions

The GSMA Open Gateway initiative launched with eight network APIs in 2023. Open Gateway portfolio of APIs has since continued to expand. 

https://www.gsma.com/solutions-and-impact/gsma-open-gateway/gsma-open-gateway-api-descriptions/

CAMARA is closely working together with GSMA Open Gateway. If you would like to have more information about Open Gateway you can follow the links here

https://camaraproject.org/resources/

All APIs can be found in the CAMARA repository here: https://github.com/camaraproject

Transcript



​Jon Scheele (00:02)

APIs are pervasive across all industries, including telecommunications. And in a sense, telecommunications has always been about ecosystems to ensure interoperability between telecommunications carriers. But it's taking a step up now with newer technologies and newer initiatives to take advantage of those. So I'm very pleased to welcome Alex Szomora, the Senior Go-To-Market Project Manager for GSMA's Open Gateway Initiative to discuss how this is unfolding. Welcome, Alex.


Alex Szomora (00:44)

Thank you, Jon. Thank you for inviting me. I'm glad to be here.


Jon Scheele (00:49)

Great, so I am always interested in the career path that leads people to become an API program manager, because to this date there still isn't a bachelor's degree in API program management. We all seem to have a different path towards getting here and you've had experiences across analytics and cyber security. Could you tell us a little bit about how you came to be in this position that you're in now?


Alex Szomora (01:27)

Sure, yes, it's not a straight line for sure. I usually start with the accent is coming from Hungary. So that's where I did my masters and it was not in computer science, although I've been programming a bit from childhood on. But I did it in finance, in corporate finance with some advanced mathematics. And when I finished my masters at that time, MBA was something that was quite novel and exciting. And I heard about the program, which would give you an MBA degree, in collaboration with MIT in South Korea, and also a scholarship. So I asked a friend of mine to prepare me for the interview. And as one of the first Hungarians and the first female Hungarian, I got into the program. And on the interview, (it was sponsored by Samsung, by the way), at the interview, they asked me, what if we don't want you to work in finance? And then I said, I'm flexible. So that was kind of the end of my finance career. I did a little bit in banking and so on. But after doing the program, which was amazing, the deal was that I worked in return for Samsung first in the headquarters and then in other offices. So I got into the division that at that time started to work on smartphones. So those were, imagine the first smartphones, so ringtones and images and so on. So I helped them build out the 15 European countries, mobile websites and then mobile application store. So that's where the whole mobile business started at that point. I moved to the UK, worked for Samsung there a little bit also, I moved into Nokia and then eventually I moved into cyber security. So I worked for the likes of Lookout Mobile, which is a big one in the US and then AVG, now Avast, and McAfee. And at some point I saw this opportunity at GSMA that I took, which was also in the identity, digital identity space. So first I worked on a solution called Mobile Connect, which can be called an API.


And after that, I did various projects for GSMA. So I've worked on 5G, IoT, and now back again in the API business. So that was my not so straight route to API.


Jon Scheele (04:01)

It's an interesting path, but then you probably touched on things that have to be integrated with APIs because digital identity as well as cybersecurity are quite important to enable connectivity. So if there was going to be a bachelor's degree in API program management, then you probably did the little pieces in preparation for that.


Alex Szomora (04:36)

Yeah, you need to learn a little bit on the fly, especially that I'm not an engineer, but a business person. But I think my skill set lies in the fact that I can translate between the technical people and the business people.


Jon Scheele (04:53)

Yeah, and I think that's in a world of specialization, being able to cross over between specializations is really, really powerful. So at GSMA, which is the standards setter for the mobile phone industry, the Open Gateway Initiative has been launched to enhance interoperability between carriers.


But then there's also a related project, the Camara project, which is under the Linux Foundation. Could you describe a little bit about where each of those fits and what the objectives of each of those are?


Alex Szomora (05:39)

Yes, so GSMA is the global mobile association of all the telco related companies that want to be members. And I usually joke that GSMA is the most profitable non-profit organization. That's because of the structure. Of course, we are doing the events, but we are doing a lot of advocacy programs. And when you work for the GSMA, it's not just that you are surrounded by great people, but also you feel good about yourself and what you are doing, because you're not doing something for profit. You are doing something for the better good, all together for an upside. And this API project is a little bit like that as well. So it's a standardization project focusing on interoperability. And the three pillars that we have is of course support that GSMA is providing through their expertise, their connections, and also some of the templates on both the business, legal and the technology side. Then you have the Camara APIs that is coming from the Linux Foundation's Camara project. And then you have the TM Forum that helps with some of the lookup and some of the security as well.


Jon Scheele (06:52)

So carriers have always had an incentive to operate with each other because to complete a call, particularly internationally, you really need to work with other carriers on the network side. But the Open Gateway Initiative is part network and it's part the business systems, isn't it? Because it's also how partners can initiate, register and consume services from the carriers.


Alex Szomora (07:29)

Yes, so historically, even GSMA, you may know it from the word GSM. So there were a few big achievements in terms of bringing the industry together. And yes, one of them was the GSM solution. The other one I would put here is roaming. And I think Open Gateway has the potential to be one of the third next big achievements of the whole association because operators or Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) are traditionally competitive and competing with each other and it's already a huge challenge just to bring them to the same table. So you have to explain it to them that we are closely observing antitrust guidelines and there are no pricing or commercial discussions that are taking place at the table.


So in terms of the API project, yes, it has a technical element in terms of working on development of the API, the technical federation part of the project, as well as the business of how they create the business model and then clear each other's kind of accounts. And it depends country by country how they are solving it. It's a very interesting dynamic to see. But I would liken it to the roaming kind of initiative that we had some time back.


Jon Scheele (08:59)

So the initiative has attracted membership from telecommunications carriers themselves, also the solution vendors like the network equipment providers. But in terms of partnership, when you publish the APIs, who are the users of those? Are they simply other carriers or are they people, companies that are also wanting to consume services on top of that like the Over-The-Top services that run over the telecommunications networks? What's really the focus here?


Alex Szomora (09:41)

Yes, the open gateway initiative is basically an ecosystem. You have the telco companies, then there is an option to bring in aggregators who already have some skills and knowledge and they can expose their APIs as well as channel partners. And then the end users are usually enterprises and businesses or the end user can be the telco itself. So there are solutions when an API is launched and then it is used internally within the MNO's billing system. But there can be e-commerce companies. So one example would be Vinted, which is an e-commerce company using some of the anti-fraud and authentication solutions. They can be big banks in various locations.


And of course, the project is constantly growing. Right now, our focus is to achieve coverage or maximum coverage in each country. But in some cases where telcos are present in more than one country, for example in Germany and Spain, we see a lot of overlap. They would even collaborate and some of the solutions are applying for both the German and the Spanish businesses as well.


Jon Scheele (11:02)

So when you promote the APIs, in more of the IT sort of disciplines, particularly in the startup world where, fragmented is the wrong word, but there's a lot of startups, there's a lot of companies that can consume other services. And so when companies set up an API program and they may even set up a developer relations team to help developers from other companies access the APIs. Very often, they're talking very much at a technical level.


What sort of developers are you looking to attract to the Open Gateway APIs? Are they companies first or are you taking a sort of bottom -up type of discussion to try to attract as many developers? Because a lot of developers now will have a big influence on which APIs or which third-party services are consumed. What's really the approach that you're taking now?


Alex Szomora (12:28)

Yes, so GSMA is always looking at the big picture. We don't have the interest or the resources to go to a granular level. But our aim is economies of scale. So the whole Camara initiative that we adopted is that the API in a code level would be standardized in a way that could be used by various organizations more or less the same way.


So what we are using in terms of developer communication or developer outreach is through our partners. So we do take surveys through our GSMA intelligence arm just to understand what is the need for the developers. But in terms of the developer portals and the relationship, we leave it to our partners. That's why we are building this big ecosystem so that some of the tasks are not taken up by us. But we are also doing various developer conferences, raising awareness, there's a lot of education that is happening. But in a general rule of thumb, we are looking at economies of scale and we are trying to reach a wider audience.


Jon Scheele (13:41)

So you mentioned some of the challenges in bringing the different parties together in a given country and sometimes in between across several countries carriers will be competing with one another and you want to encourage them to see about the bigger picture which is growing the pie rather than figuring out how to slice the pie.


Where are you seeing areas where you get the best traction and where do you see challenges that make it a little bit harder to roll out the adoption of these APIs?


Alex Szomora (14:29)

There are so many areas I could talk about within this question. Yes, I was talking about the historical and cultural kind of mind shift that has to happen. It was great that the program started basically a couple of years ago at MWC Barcelona when there was an intention expressed by the Telefonica group to start the Open Gateway Initiative. And the next day we were able to launch a couple of countries, be it a federated Camara API, and it was the golden thread throughout the event. Mats Granryd, GSMA's Director General, in his keynote, was highlighting the countries and the several operators, and I think that created this MeToo effect.


So we got a lot more interest, a lot more buzz around it. So the number of countries and the number of operators that were interested just increased a couple of fold. We are still a long way ahead because once you commit, there is a whole list of activities that have to happen and that takes months, sometimes over a year.


In terms of the hurdles where I see is just because it hasn't been done before, so that's why it's difficult. There are no real templates. It's all hands on deck. We adopt a kind of contribution approach. So whichever country or telco figured it out, what is the best template for agreements or federations, we are inviting them to share and just contribute to the community. Some challenges that we always see is which federation model is the best? How to justify in terms of future revenues? Because sometimes it takes time to ramp this up. Again, it's an educational process. Because we are talking about all the countries in the globe, so we are looking at over 50 operators, over 240-something networks. Some of the legal questions that come up are so country -specific that they cannot provide a unified opinion on that. And of course we are anyway shying away from providing legal advice. So both on a technical and the legal side, there are some open questions and it's because it hasn't been done before. But it doesn't mean it cannot be done.


Jon Scheele (17:10)

Okay, so there are geographic aspects to the adoption, but then there's also the breadth and depth of the services themselves that you've published APIs. So there are some services that are involved with provisioning a particular type of service, others that are perhaps about sharing account information.


What do you see as an adoption path? Once a carrier or several carriers in a region have committed to adopting, where do they start in terms of which services do they prioritize and move on to after that?


Alex Szomora (18:03)

Yes, so we started with eight core APIs and we have been increasing the numbers; by the end of the year we are going to have 57. We just recently launched a new one called the data API.


Usually the operators are starting with either some kind of anti-fraud authentication or quality on demand APIs. The most popular ones are SIM swap, number verification, OTP (although that's something that in some countries are being replaced by number verification), device location, device status, and quality on demand. So checking the quality of the service, let it be around any kind of conference call like ours, or it can be gaming as well.


And the end users can be e-commerce companies that are conducting sales or banks that just want to make sure that, for example, some of their ATM or over-the-phone transactions are actually safe.


Jon Scheele (19:14)

Okay, so I guess it probably makes the most sense to start with something like authentication and anti-fraud because that's a problem that affects every carrier and the more they can collaborate on those things, because they're all being attacked and their customers are all being attacked. So it makes sense to approach that from a unified defence aspect. And it will obviously reduce their costs if they can reduce their fraud.


And the other aspect, which I would think is a little bit more contentious, is the revenue side of things. Because then you have to get into discussions about who's going to share the revenue and who's going to get the most value out of the exchange.


Do you see particular ways of approaching that, or is it just a matter of working through the issues with the carriers?


Alex Szomora (20:24)

In terms of pricing and commercials, as I mentioned, those are bilateral conversations that are being held at the MNO level. And some of the examples we have are either around quality on demand or some version of roaming. But there is definitely some kind of clearing happening in the background. But that's not the organization's role and we don't want to take part in that.


There are a couple of challenges in terms of launching an API that is needed like that. The MNOs may already have a version of that because anti-fraud was an issue before as well. So the question also is how do you introduce a product if you have a similar one? So there, how we can help from experience is either you don't, you actually choose another API that would still be relevant. We are also conducting different fintech workshops right now over the region. I work in the APAC region to identify more pain points where we can help banks. Some other solution is that you're building a better one. You're building a better API and use case. So you can either charge a premium or you end of life the previous product.


But there is always an inertia within the organization and of course among your customers when you want to change something. So that's one pain point.


And the second one is the approach of build it and they come. That may or may not help and especially with the organizations where a mere couple of million dollars of revenue wouldn't move the needle and you want to show big results. So for that, we also have a solution that we are working on just to help generating demand and pushing from the demand side as well.


Jon Scheele (22:27)

So the newer technologies such as 5G, as they're being progressively rolled out by carriers (and some carriers are further ahead than others), it's going to lead to new types of services being available. Where do you see the future unfolding there? Are you going to have more APIs for those different services, or are you going to have a set of foundational APIs that could perhaps be extended to use those additional services? You mentioned sort of the challenge of migrating from a pre-existing API to the Open Gateway APIs. What sort of extensibility do you see for the vision of the new services that are going to become available very soon?


Alex Szomora (23:32)

Yes, and the innovation is ongoing. You cannot stop that. And that's very exciting to see. Right now, what I can also see is that in some countries, 5G is just the natural network that everyone is using day to day. And in some more emerging countries, we are more at the 3, 4G. So that would limit the kind of APIs that they are using right now. But even they can innovate.


There is a quite stringent and democratic process to submit a new API. So it has to be significantly different from the others. So yes, there will be the core APIs, but there are always new ones coming in. But the organization, neither GSMA nor Camara takes it lightly which one is the next API that is being accepted among the existing ones. And where I see new APIs coming is, as I mentioned, we can see more and more quality on demand related solutions. Not just around measuring the network quality for calls and games, but also anything related to drones and aviation.


So when I invite some channel partners to tell us about new solutions, that's the area where I see that right now we may use less APIs, but it's really exciting. And I think around logistics and aviation, we will see more solutions and use cases coming up.


Jon Scheele (25:07)

So as the adoption of Open Gateway increases and becomes more mature, it's not really going to stop because you'll have these newer types of services that will be either accessing the core APIs or newer ones as the need arises. So I guess there's just continued change then and more opportunities to bring new services into areas that perhaps were quite hard before. They are going to touch more people in more ways.


Alex Szomora (25:55)

Yes, just a new item on the menu that you can select and you can use it as a building block within your organization. So that's very exciting. And also we have been focusing on signing up not just the MNOs, as I said, we have over 240 something mobile networks, but also various channel partners so that they would have the Camara APIs within their portfolio.


And they can also offer it to their clients as well as helping us evangelize these inter-operable solutions advantages.


Jon Scheele (26:33)

Okay, all right. Thanks very much for sharing that. So, for people who are listening to this, what is the one thing that you'd like them to take away from this or take action on to help you further the objectives of the Open Gateway Initiative?


Alex Szomora (27:01)

Yes. So depending on who is listening. So if you're a telco and you have heard about Open Gateway and you are just getting curious, then please reach out to GSMA. And we are also constantly talking with our members, growing the numbers. And if you are a business and you have some kind of a pain point and it doesn't necessarily have to be around fraud, authentication or any of the other solutions today I was mentioning, please talk with your existing partners, telco partners, because chances are that they can help you just solve the problem that you are having for some time.


Jon Scheele (27:47)

Okay, alright, well thanks very much Alex and what's the best way people can get in touch with you?


Alex Szomora (27:55)

Yes, so if you're interested in the Open Gateway Initiative and joining it, whether you're a Telco or any other businesses, then you can send me an email at aszomora @gsma .com, which is A and then my surname (good luck spelling that) at gsma .com.


Jon Scheele (28:17)

Okay, thanks very much Alex.


Alex Szomora (28:21)

Thank you very much, Jon.








powered by blue connector

API Strategy and Tech Advisory, Training and Events

We connect your organisation, your customers, partners and suppliers with the information and knowledge you need to make your tech work for you

 Learn more