The Future of Network APIs: Unlocking Growth for Telcos

Boris Weiss, Head of Strategy and Telco Partnerships

Network APIs are often believed to be one of the major growth drivers for telcos aiming to broaden their revenue base and tap into adjacent business models whilst leveraging their core capabilities (telco as a platform). And indeed, industry analysts forecast the network API market to grow at double digit rates to more than 1,000 billion USD in 2030.

To maximize potential reach, API monetization often goes hand in hand with standardization and X-telco collaboration. What started with the Open Gateway and Camara initiatives a few years ago, has gained further momentum with the recent announcement of 12 major telcos (among them our Utiq shareholders Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica, and Vodafone) and Ericsson teaming up to create a joint venture and sell APIs.

Being a telco joint venture ourselves, at Utiq, we firmly believe in leveraging standardized APIs for the greater (telco) good. However, our experience shows that you will need to build another important muscle to really thrive in the API business: deep vertical expertise that helps understand the key business challenges driving decision-makers in the industries that you’re targeting – be that online marketing, financial services, or automotive.

That’s why at Utiq, we have a diverse team of online marketing and advertising specialists combining decades of industry leadership working alongside a dedicated team of telco and technology experts. Together, we are tackling one of the major issues facing brands and publishers today: how to sustain a competitive open internet ecosystem whilst giving back control and transparency over their data to end users?

We combine some of the most important telco “superpowers” such as identifying real human traffic across browsers, devices and platforms to build our “Authentic Consent Service” – an infrastructure that helps brands and publishers to deterministically address consented audiences in mobile, fixed, and TV environments – at scale, and without 3rd party cookies. In 2025, we will continue our journey as we enter into new territories like the UK, Italy, and Austria.

And who knows, maybe one day, we will see similar X-telco initiatives targeted specifically to the needs of financial industry, automotive, or industrial clients…