According to research by STL Partners, a survey of 400 developers from around the world think the term refers to their wider IT networks
More than half (55%) of software developers do not associate the term network APIs with telecom network capabilities, but link them to the management of their wider IT networks. This is one of the main findings from the latest STL Partners survey, Telecom network APIs: What do developers really want? It was conducted in November 2024 and examines the perceptions of more than 400 software application developers across key global markets.
What app developers want
To help address developers’ lack of familiarity with their potential, telcos must strike “a fine balance” between demonstrating new capabilities and delivering services in a way that developers are already familiar with according to STL Partners’ Research Director, Amy Cameron, who is the author of the survey.
“We believe operators should position their APIs as delivering similar functional capabilities to existing APIs – that is, the ability to manage network functions, control access to resources and exchange data across different networks – but across a new networking domain that has previously been unavailable to them”, she adds.
On the other hand, the survey shows that the developer community is increasingly aware of telecom API initiatives, such as the GSMA’s Open Gateway and CAMARA. Cameron think more can be done to improve the degree of knowledge.
Despite this, STL Partners found clear interest in the capabilities that telcos can offer to developers. When asked about the perceived value of different features of network APIs, accessing network performance information, such as latency and jitter, was the most popular choice, deemed attractive by more than half (54%) of developers.
Other findings
The research also discovered that half of respondents find the prospect of understanding device status on the network appealing and 44% also see value in specifying and guaranteeing network performance levels for a period of time.
The research found that developers predominantly access APIs through hyperscalers, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and others. This applies to telecom APIs, and Microsoft claims the top spot in terms of overall customer experience for developers.
Cameron suggests that the telecom industry should give developers access to APIs through the channels they already use, starting with cloud platforms, then systems integrators and telcos’ own platforms.
“This approach should lower the barriers to adoption enough to expand telcos’ reach beyond developers focused on priority communication and into the wider enterprise productivity, IT and IoT developer market”, the author concludes.