CAMARA, the Global Telco API Alliance, Delivers First Major Release with Innovative APIs for Seamless Access to Network Functions

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Sep 16, 2024, 03:00 ET

Meta release delivers a consistent set of 25 quality APIs, to fuel innovation and downstream adoption, that have been vetted and tested through rigorous release management processes
Released APIs include popular functions such as SIM Swap, Number Verification, Edge Discovery,and Quality on Demand, among others
396 companies and 1100+ contributors dedicated to collaboratively define interfaces providing customers with access to telecom industry network capabilities

VIENNA, Austria, Sept. 16, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- Open Source Summit Europe -- The Linux Foundation's CAMARA project, an open source community addressing telco industry API interoperability, today announced the availability of its first official release, CAMARA "Meta-Release Fall24." The release contains 25 APIs across 13 sub projects that have been vetted for quality, consistency, and stability through rigorous release management processes.

Initiated in 2021 by a small number of telco operators, vendors and hyperscalers, CAMARA officially launched in February 2022 with 22 initial partners and graduated to a funded model in September 2023, with 250 participating organizations and over 750 contributors. Since then, the project has grown to 1100+ contributors and 396 organizations, along with more 26+ API families and sub-projects, and growing.

"CAMARA's rapid growth is testament to the need for telco network APIs to become more open, more accessible and easier to monetize," said Arpit Joshipura, General Manager, Networking, Edge and IoT, at the Linux Foundation. "The community's first official, milestone release further 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 with CAMARA in making these solutions even more accessible."

The Meta-Release consists of 13 sub-projects which bring 25 APIs to the ecosystem. The APIs included in the release represent a consistent set of aligned, quality APIs that have met rigorous release management and design guidelines. The Meta-Release represents a foundation for CAMARA APIs moving forward in development, also for APIs in production; the community has committed to delivering twice-yearly updates to vetted APIs so network operators can plan the deployment in their networks. API users can be confident to get the latest and most stable versions from their network operators and API providers.

The Meta-Release is also coming 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. These, the guidelines and the API definitions and documentation can all be found on https://github.com/camaraproject

APIs included in the Meta release:

Stable APIs with v1.0.0 versions (previous API versions have been implemented by network operators): Location Verification, Number Verification, One-time Password SMS, Simple Edge Discovery, and SIM Swap
Further APIs which have been previously implemented by network operators, with updated versions: Carrier Billing, Device Reachability Status, Device Roaming Status, Home Devices QoD, KYC Fill-In, KYC Match, Location Retrieval, Quality-on-Demand (with qos-profiles)
Initial versions of new APIs, ready to be implemented by network operators:
Call Forwarding Signal, Carrier bBilling Refund, Connectivity Insights (with application profiles), Population Density Data, QoD Provisioning
New APIs to subscribe for event notifications in CloudEvents format: Connectivity Insights Subscriptions, Device Reachability Status Subscriptions, Device Roaming Status Subscriptions, Geofencing Subscriptions, SIM Swap Subscriptions

"I am incredibly proud of the entire CAMARA ecosystem—from developers to members and partners—for achieving our community's first Meta Release," said Nathan Rader, Board Chair of CAMARA and VP, Service and Capability Exposure at Deutsche Telekom. "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 / commitment to simplifying API availability across telecom networks and countries."

CAMARA offers new opportunities for collaboration between network operators, marketplaces, aggregators and API customers. CAMARA is pleased to be selected as the Network API specification location for the recently-announced venture amongst leading global telecoms. A critical success factor is also the established alignment with GSMA Open Gateway and TMForum about forming an open, global, accessible API ecosystem. The benefit for customers and developers comes in the form of consistent and user-friendly access to network capabilities, thus enabling developers to seamlessly deploy applications to run consistently across telco networks and countries. This prevents fragmentation and empowers faster, more versatile advancement of global application portability and broad industry adoption of new features and capabilities.

In addition to its broad portfolio of participating organizations, the CAMARA fund is composed of 10 Premium sponsors (including Accenture, Deutsche Telekom, Ericsson, Microsoft, Nokia, Orange, Telefonica, Verizon, Vodafone, T-Mobile), 7 General sponsors (including AlphaZero, CableLabs, Centillion, Charter Communications, INVIA, Scenera, Shabodi), and one Associate sponsor (OpenID Foundation).

Meet CAMARA at Open Source Summit EU - Join today

The CAMARA community will host a booth onsite at Open Source Summit EU, 16-19 September, where attendees can learn more about the community and how to get involved in the open telco API ecosystem. Operators, vendors, hyperscalers , aggregators, enterprises, and developers are encouraged to stop by and learn more about the benefits of open APIs.

CAMARA project invites all interested parties to help build the best APIs for all telecom customers by joining as a Premium sponsor, General sponsor, associating organization, participating organization, or individual. More details on the project, as well as how to join, are available at https://camaraproject.org/.

Community Support

"The CAMARA Meta-Release solidifies a new era where developers and companies no longer have to guess what's inside the network—the network now talks back. By connecting historically siloed industries, we unlock unprecedented insights and capabilities, driving innovation and enhancing products across business sectors. This foundational shift empowers developers and businesses to create transformative solutions and generate value throughout network ecosystems. At Centillion.ai, we are profoundly grateful to the engineers and trade organizations (GSMA and Linux Foundation) that made this remarkable achievement possible," said Nick "Data Nick" Venezia, founder, Centillion.Ai.

"The CAMARA Meta-Release is not only a remarkable milestone for the telco industry, but a testament to the significance of establishing common standards to unlock innovation," said Bob Everson, Sr. Director, Mobile Architecture and Ecosystem, Cisco. "Cisco works with service provider partners to enable API capabilities which empower customers and developers in our ecosystem. The CAMARA initiative is a major step towards delivering new and innovative capabilities at a global scale."

"Ericsson (including Vonage) are committed to making CAMARA successful, and we are key contributors to the upcoming CAMARA-Meta Release. This release brings the first set of stable APIs to the market, in parallel to new and updated beta-level APIs for market validation. Together with our customers, partners and the CAMRA community, we are excited about the continuing journey of unleashing the innovation potential of open Network APIs enabling the digital transformation of society," said Per Beming, Chief Standardization Officer, Ericsson.

"We've come a long way in just a few years, with leading technology firms and telecoms operators representing more than two-thirds of the world's mobile connections now supporting this approach to open, universal network APIs through CAMARA, GSMA Open Gateway and TM Forum," said Henry Calvert, Head of Networks at GSMA. "This new API release by CAMARA marks a major landmark in our collective goal of helping developers and the industry design and launch new services, utilising the rich functionality mobile networks can unleash."

"Consistency and simplicity of APIs are the foundation of network innovation. Through the creation and adoption of CAMARA standards, and new cross-industry partnerships, Vodafone will make new network APIs more accessible, cheaper to implement and easier to scale for customers and third-party companies. The power of our 5G network, coupled with CAMARA's first full release, are the drivers of growth."

"At Telefónica, we are committed to advancing the digital transformation of networks through our participation in the CAMARA project. The standardization of essential APIs, including Number Verification, Device Location, and SIM Swap, represents a major breakthrough for anti- fraud solutions. Moreover, the availability of APIs like Population Density Data opens the door to innovative new use cases, which we are excited to explore in close collaboration with our customers," said David del Val, Global Director of Telefónica Open Gateway.

About the Linux Foundation

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SOURCE CAMARA Project