- Network APIs still falling short of 5G monetization goals
- Analysts argued the industry overly focused on mobile-only APIs, while real value requires cross-domain integration
- Biggest opportunity lies in “boring” use cases, they added
DTW IGNITE 2026, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK – Operators have been searching for the holy grail for 5G monetization for years now, and for a moment, it seemed like they found their chalice in the form of network APIs. The industry launched the CAMARA project in early 2022 and in February 2024, McKinsey predicted that network APIs could generate $100 billion to $300 billion in connectivity and edge related revenue for operators by 2030 or so.
In June of that year, though, Fierce pointed out that despite two years of work, network APIs were still a bit of a hot mess.
Another two years later, they still are.
At DTW Ignite this week, Fierce put a key question to analysts: Are we doing network APIs all wrong?
“Yes....and no,” neXt Curve Founder Leonard Lee told Fierce.
“They’re probably doing some of what is needed and they’re probably spending some of their cycles chasing things which won’t happen,” Disruptive Analysis founder Dean Bubley added.
The more things stay the same
In 2024, two of the biggest issues were fragmentation and finding a developer audience for network APIs. Ericsson and a gaggle of operators are trying to solve those problems via Aduna, which offers a streamlined API platform for developers to work on.
The main problems now are twofold, according to Lee and Bubley.
First, operators still lack a baseline harmonization of their underlying infrastructure, which would really make network APIs work across their networks.
Second, operators are so focused on horizontal APIs – that is, across mobile networks – that they haven’t even broached APIs which cross mobile, fixed and edge network barriers. But that’s exactly the kind of connectivity pathway that use cases need addressed.
For example, for a car manufacturer to get data from one of their vehicles, that information needs to cross a mobile network (or, perhaps someday, a satellite network), then hop onto an IP network and cross an internet exchange to end up in a data center where the manufacturer can access it, Bubley said.
“There’s a fixation on the network API and then you kind of jump straight to use cases and all the hypothetical magic that happens,” Lee told Fierce. “People haven’t really addressed what has to happen in the middle, all the innovation that needs to happen in order to do exactly what Dean is talking about where you have these cross-domain, cross-modality interconnects that happen between all of the infrastructure.”
T-Mobile is part of Aduna, which just had a board meeting last week to figure out what the next generation of APIs looks like. The operator is already using APIs for point of sales and silent authentication applications, and makes "hundreds of billions of API calls" each month, T-Mobile Chief Network Officer Ankur Kapoor told Fierce.
He argued that when it comes to APIs, the industry needs to "crawl, walk, run." The cross-modality approach Bubley and Lee suggested firmly falls into the "run" category, he added.
"Can you actually break these horizontal silos and vertical silos and make it more end-to-end, where no matter what the connectivity is, you have these calls? I think the industry needs to mature on that front," Kapoor said. He likened it to the transition that happened a few years ago to enable call handoffs between Wi-Fi and terrestrial networks.
Bubley said that beyond network features and functions there are a lot of other ancillary pieces of information you might need access to – like consent management, financial credit scoring, government compliance information – that a developer would need to access to enable their use case or application. That’s also completely been left in the shadows.
“There’s an awful lot of different pieces of the puzzle, and I think we’re focused sometimes, the telecoms industry and especially the mobile industry, on how special we are...whereas it’s actually part of the ecosystem,” Bubley said.
Show me the use case
Regardless of whether you’re talking about just mobile APIs or fixed-mobile network integration, one pesky question remains: What is the use case?
As ever, the answer is both somewhat elusive and one that is entirely necessary to justify what will be a costly implementation process.
Lee suggested there are some “tactical applications” that network APIs can enable in combination with cloud and AI compute APIs. These include things like sensing, drone detection and persistent digital twinning.
Kapoor, meanwhile, argued APIs will prove critical for Physical AI applications and in the 6G era.
Bubley and Lee both noted that while operators – and reporters – are chasing the shiny object in the form of a revolutionary use case, it is actually seemingly mundane applications that will actually provide the most value. Think use cases like Live Translation, which Lee pointed out is actually quite complicated to achieve.
“Most of the stuff is going to be really boring. And the problem, why people aren’t finding value is because they’re looking for the shiny object and they’re not focusing on the boring stuff that’s actually valuable,” Lee said.
Will satellites join the API fray?
Floating around in the background is the question of whether satellite players – which have been disrupting the broadband market and may be eyeing a mobile play as well – will join the network API conversation.
Bubley said there are some extant APIs for satellite access, but they’re not yet standardized since all the satellite constellations in orbit are different.
“We can probably expect that there’s going to be a non-terrestrial network connectivity API, which will then still be dependent on Starlink playing nicely with Viasat and Amazon Leo,” Bubley said. “So, I think that that’s going to be quite a while unless somehow regulators or policymakers can boot them into collaborating.”