Businesses of all sorts rapidly bring new services to market by embracing open innovation with 3rd party application developers. This rising tide of software innovation is enabled by APIs. But when you consider telecom, the question is, how to support 3rd party application developers in the best way and at the same time protect the telco cloud’s programmable assets.
Just as in IT, so too with the telco cloud, where the APIs require a single exposure platform to reduce complexity, provide a single point of access for applications, support security, and ensure integrity through authentication and rate limiting. The telco cloud relies on an API Gateway that serves different customers and different verticals, all of whom have different needs, which requires the ability to customize APIs.
This whitepaper identifies the similarities and differences between IT and Telco cloud API exposure and describes the ideal exposure platform attributes. Beside supporting developers with SDKs and example software, the platform should also support mobile CSPs who are operating the Telco cloud platform. It must reduce complexity by enabling the integration of many 3rd party APIs, so that there is one single interface to access different set of APIs. Complexity must be further reduced by serving the needs of different verticals with mashup APIs that are tailormade for different use cases.
Once you start to see the Telco cloud as a programmable asset, it is necessary to learn insights about 5G service scenarios: Extreme Mobile Broadband, Massive Machine Type Communication and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication. We describe how 5G core Open APIs support these scenarios. To understand the possibilities of 5G’s Network Exposure Function (NEF), we first look at 4G exposure and learn how the 3GPP standard added more requirements on top of it to maximize benefits of 5G.
As providers of the programmable platform, CSPs either have an API strategy or must quickly develop an API strategy, because it must reflect their movements in the forthcoming 5G API era. It is also important that CSPs view their programmable network as a platform and use it as a way of partnering and supporting the creation of a new 5G API-based application ecosystem.
A 5G network is not just a collection of connectivity infrastructure, but instead it is a programmable platform to create new applications based on collaboration. This collaboration enables operators to use their 5G network programming abilities to maximize innovation, minimize time to market and create great new monetizable services for consumers and enterprises.
After investigating an ideal 5G telco API exposure platform from different angles, this whitepaper takes a short look at Nokia Network Exposure Function, including its main attributes and architecture. It provides you with an insight as to how Nokia realizes openness between your telco cloud and your 3rd party application partners.
To download the whitepaper, please access to the following link:
https://pages.nokia.com/T003WN.Telco-Network-Exposure.html
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