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Contextual information about participants in a session –such as their latest tweet, their mood, most recent
e-mails exchanged between the call parties, other people who have been on common sessions and so on
– could potentially be provided as part of the family of presence services.
RCS provides a foundation for extending communications into the future leveraging new technologies either
through further capabilities specifications or via exposure of APIs.
API EXPOSURE TO DEVELOPERS
APIs are programmatic interfaces that expose the mobile operators’ network capabilities by hiding the
complexity of the underlying network. These interfaces may be abstract, defined independent from
underlying technologies such as operating system, network access or binding protocols. Therefore, APIs
act as an abstraction layer between the network and software development platforms.
Operators must adapt their strategy to include APIs for both Web-based and traditional communications.
By unifying mobile devices, browsers and applications through APIs, operators can differentiate from Webonly
and telecom-only competitors and instead engage subscribers who prefer to use both the Web and
telecom services.
Expanding with open APIs will also increase operator brand’s reach and generate new revenue by opening
communications to innovation. It makes innovation quicker and more affordable while helping operators
differentiate by branding more robust services onto the Web.
By exposing APIs to developers, operators will benefit in the following ways:
• Accelerated innovation – Exposing APIs enables delivering new applications faster to the market
by reducing time to market from years to months.
• Differentiated services – Attracting Web developers helps operators to create unique and
differentiating services for consumer, business and vertical industry markets, ultimately generating
new revenues.
• New Markets – It enables exploration of new wholesale business models as part of an end-to-end
API strategy for exposing the value of the network to developers and generating new revenues
from API usage.
Exposing certain network capabilities (RCS APIs) to developer communities enables software developers
to create new applications, enhance the existing operators’ services and also to open up new business
opportunities (e.g., automotive, health care) across consumer and enterprise markets. This approach
encourages innovation in the application and service space and allows users to be presented with a large
and diverse range of third-party applications to choose from.
The OMA has produced RESTful network APIs based on requirements received from many industry forums,
such as 3GPP, GSMA, Small Cell Forum and BEREC. OMA RESTful Network APIs are modular APIs that
target specific services (e.g., messaging, presence, voice and video calls, location) and network capabilities
(e.g., QoS) that are exposed to third-party developers but can also be used over the UNI by a lightweight
Web-based client.
The OMA and the GSMA have collaborated and complement each other to provide industry with a set of
standardized network APIs. A standardized API approach allows more developers to build apps and
services for operator networks, so users could be provided with a wide variety of new applications and
services every day.
The Evolution of 3GPP Communications Services – 5G Americas – July 2016
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