In an initiative that marks a milestone in the global mobile industry, the leading mobile operators in Germany, Deutsche Telekom, O2 Telefónica, and Vodafone, have announced the commercial launch of a new service designed to combat online fraud and protect the digital identities of mobile customers. This move is part of the GSMA Open Gateway initiative and represents a new business model for the German operators, by providing developers and businesses with these network capabilities to enhance existing services or create new ones.
The network APIs, available in the CAMARA standard, aim to assist mobile commerce and financial institutions in developing new services to combat digital fraud and protect German mobile subscribers. For example, user account login identification on websites and applications can now be automatically executed in the background through number verification, rather than using traditional two-factor authentication.
The three operators are collaborating with the technology partner Vonage, a part of Ericsson, to make the APIs available to enterprise developers. Vonage is already working with its client Vinted, the leading international C2C online fashion marketplace in Europe, to integrate these new APIs.
The GSMA Open Gateway, launched at MWC Barcelona a year ago, is a common and open framework among operators that enables application developers, businesses, and cloud providers to create more secure applications and services that seamlessly communicate with each other through programmable access points to mobile networks known as APIs.
Improving online security and addressing mobile fraud
Fraud prevention is one of the most important issues that application developers are currently looking to address, with fraudulent misuse and fake accounts posing a significant threat to their business models. The newly launched Open Gateway APIs will allow development teams and partners to create new layers of intelligent authentication, verification, and security within mobile networks.
German operators are also working with Siemens Energy to test Quality on Demand (QoD) APIs. The mobile industry aims to enable new services around augmented reality, robotics, commercial use of drones, and immersive online gaming through these APIs, ensuring optimized data connections for consistent and reliable connections, even with lower latency.
Siemens Energy is using the APIs to perform virtually assisted remote maintenance that requires consistently high network quality to enable widespread deployment even in locations without stable connectivity. “The Quality on Demand Network API is improving the daily work of our experts,” said Mark Schaefer, Vice President of IT Business at Siemens Energy.
By 2024, the German GSMA Open Gateway ecosystem is expected to expand with additional partners like Microsoft Azure to make the first CAMARA APIs available. The GSMA Open Gateway APIs are defined, developed, and published in CAMARA, the open-source project for developers to access enhanced network capabilities, driven by the Linux Foundation in partnership with TM Forum.
This launch underscores the importance of online security and the commitment of German operators to innovation and the development of safer and more accessible digital services, marking a significant step forward in promoting open standards within the developer community.
photo: © 2024 GSMA / MWC