In this interview, Otilia Anton, Telco API Programme Director at Orange, said the new unit marks a shift to approaching network APIs as products rather than technology projects
Last year, Orange made “two key moves” to accelerate bringing network APIs to market, Otilia Anton (pictured) explained. The first was launching the Aduna joint venture with Ericsson and 16 operators. The second was a decision to take a more “business-driven” approach to APIs, rather than viewing them only as a “technical framework,” which led to the creation of LiveNet, announced earlier this week at MWC.
“The main purpose of the business unit is to fast track the availability of APIs and make sure that we offer simplified, accessible ways of interacting with Orange APIs, both on indirect and direct channels for customers,” she said.
Orange’s participation in Aduna and LiveNet are seen as complementary. While Aduna works to build large-scale, standardized APIs for developer communities, Orange’s own business unit addresses the technical, organizational and cultural changes needed to support new API business models.
The unit sits within Orange Group’s networks organization of the CTIO office and addresses B2B wholesale and B2B2C use cases. The core team includes skills from other parts of the business to ensure “a holistic approach” to use cases and API propositions, she explained.
“As leader of this new business unit, I’m personally focused on showing that this brings value and that as a telco, we can dynamically adapt to market needs,” she said.
API go-to-market options
The APIs are made available through indirect channel partners, such as Aduna, Azure Programmable Connectivity and aggregators, as well as through the operator’s own developer portal where developers can explore APIs in a sandbox or production environment.
Orange currently offers identity and anti-fraud APIs in France and Spain and has trial versions available in Belgium and plans to introduce them in Poland. The next Orange APIs to come onto the market will be related to geolocation and quality-on-demand.
In addition, the operator is also looking to its own enterprise offerings for ways to augment them or create new services through API exposure.
For example, Orange Business offers a location data-based service called Flux Vision for enterprises and urban planners that tracks population movements and traffic density. It has also been working on a population density API through CAMARA that enables developers to access and predict mobility patterns. The API essentially exposes the capabilities of the Flux Vision service.
Developers got to try out this new API during a hackathon event at MWC25.
“We’re taking a value proposal that was there for the enterprise sector, putting it into CAMARA, and [seeing] how we can use this to have a broader reach and a more appealing opportunity for the developers out there,” she explained.
5G SA adds momentum
When asked what it will take for network APIs to take off commercially, Anton said it was important for telcos to focus on solving the “simplification, robustness, scalability and predictability of the solutions” and to work with systems integrators and enterprises on “co-development” of use cases.
Beyond that, she said the rollout of 5G standalone (SA) will also help to drive commercial progress. Orange has deployed 5G SA in several markets and has initial network slicing offers available in France via its 5G+ service.
“With more maturity on 5G SA, and first real B2B offers, this can be augmented by network APIs, because that’s where we tap into having on-demand personalized connectivity that really empowers the application that’s running the service,” said Anton.
In the bigger picture, network APIs are fundamental to Orange’s telco as a platform initiative as its ambition is for all its products to be reachable via APIs.
“This is a transformation on the path from telco to techco that we apply first on the CAMARA APIs, but we have a broader vision on how this impacts offerings for telecom connectivity in the mid- and long-term,” said Anton.
