The community has committed to delivering an API release twice a year
CAMARA has launched what it calls its first major release of network APIs. The Meta-Release Fall24 contains 25 APIs across 13 sub projects “vetted for quality, consistency and stability through rigorous release management processes”
The community has committed to delivering updates twice a year to vetted APIs so that operators can plan deployments in their networks. Also, API users know to expect the “latest and most stable versions from their network operators and API providers”.
Rapid growth
The overarching network API project, CAMARA, launched in February 2022 with 22 partners under the Linux Foundation umbrella. By September 2023 is had evolved to a funded model, with 250 participating organisations and more than 750 contributors.
Since then the project has increased to more than 1,100 contributors from 396 organisations, and is working on more than 26 API families and sub-projects, which is growing all the time.
The Meta-Release consists of 13 sub-projects which bring 25 APIs to the ecosystem. These APIs “represent a consistent set of aligned, quality APIs that have met rigorous release management and design guidelines,” according to the press statement. They form a foundation for the APIs’ ongoing development and production.
Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, at the Linux Foundation, noted, “CAMARA’s rapid growth is testament to the need for telco network APIs to become more open, more accessible and easier to monetize.
“The community’s first official, milestone release…enables active, open collaboration in the development and availability of more connected solutions. We encourage operators, cloud providers, application developers, hyperscalers and aggregators, and technology vendors to partner…CAMARA in making these solutions even more accessible.”
Security and interoperability
The Meta-Release comes with a Security and Interoperability Profile based on OAuth 2.0 and OpenID standards, “ensuring the secure, privacy-friendly and seamless access for developers to network information and capabilities,” the statement says. They can be found, along with the guidelines, API definitions and documentation are here.
APIs included in the Meta release
Stable APIs with v1.0.0 versions – previous API versions were implemented by network operators – forLocation Verification, Number Verification, One-time Password SMS, Simple Edge Discovery, and SIM Swap.
New versions of APIs implemented by network operators with updates to Carrier Billing, Device Reachability Status, Device Roaming Status, Home Devices QoD, KYC [know your customer] Fill-In, KYC Match, Location Retrieval and Quality-on-Demand (with quality of service profiles).
Initial versions of new APIs that are ready for implementation by network operators includingCall Forwarding Signal, Carrier Billing Refund, Connectivity Insights (with application profiles), Population Density Data and QoD Provisioning.
New APIs to subscribe for event notifications in CloudEvents format covering Connectivity Insights Subscriptions, Device Reachability Status Subscriptions, Device Roaming Status Subscriptions, Geofencing Subscriptions and SIM Swap Subscriptions.
Nathan Rader, Board Chair of CAMARA and VP, Service and Capability Exposure at Deutsche Telekom, said, “This milestone is a significant step forward in our mission to enable seamless access to telecom network capabilities through open APIs.
“The global support we’ve received underscores the industry’s focus on [and] commitment to simplifying API availability across telecom networks and countries.”
New opportunities
Meta-Release Fall24 follows hard on the heels of the announcement of a commercial API-based venture announced last week by some of the world’s biggest network operator groups with Ericsson. That announcement said that the commercial venture had chosen CAMARA as “the Network API specification location”.
CAMARA acknowledged the established alignment with TM Forum’s work on APIs and the GSMA’s Open Gateway as “a critical success factor” in forming an open, global API ecosystem.
It also highlighted CAMARA’s fund is composed of 10 Premium sponsors (including Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Orange, Telefonica, Verizon, Vodafone and T-Mobile), plus seven General sponsors (AlphaZero, CableLabs, Centillion, Charter Communications, INVIA, Scenera, Shabodi), and one Associate sponsor (OpenID Foundation).
The CAMARA community is hosting a booth onsite at Open Source Summit EU, from16-19 September.