Ericsson And Deutsche Telekom Partner To Provide API Network

The launch of Ericsson and Deutsche Telekom's new business (photo: Twitter @Vonage)

JAKARTA - Swedish telecommunications company Ericsson announced a partnership with Deutsche Telekom from Germany on Wednesday, September 20 to provide software for developers and business customers that will allow telecommunication operators to earn more revenue.

Known as the network application programming interface (network API), the software will use the Vonage platform - the company Ericsson bought for $6.2 billion in 2022 - to help developers create new use cases based on mobile networks.

Network APIs can be used by businesses for things like increasing 5G speed when needed to track customer phones in stores while transactions are in progress to prevent fraud.

"We see API's business as a standalone business, so we need to make it profitable independently and how revenue-sharing works is very attractive to us and will appeal to Deutsche Telekom," said CEO Ericsson Borje Ekholm in an interview.

Telecommunications research firm STL Partners predicts that revenue from the mobile network API will grow to more than US$20 billion (Rp606 trillion) by 2028.

More than 140 companies work under an open source project called CAMARA to define, develop, and test network APIs.

After investing hundreds of billions of dollars in 5G infrastructure, the telecommunications operator has sought to get a return from faster connection sales to businesses to factory automation, with varying results.

"Mereka (operators) ingin mendapatkan lebih banyak pendapatan, mereka akan dapat menjual fitur, baik itu kecepatan, latent, authentication lokasi, mereka akan menjual banyak hal berbeda yang keluar dari jaringan," kata Ekholm." Itu memberikan sumber pendapatan baru yang belum mereka miliki dalam waktu yang lama."