Taking into account that telecommunications operators constantly need to reinvent themselves, it is normal that they open new business avenues from time to time. In the case of Movistar, its parent company Telefónica is already taking the first steps of a project that it would present before MWC 2024.
Last year, the star announcement at the Barcelona telephony and communications fair featured Open Gateway and now we know in more detail how Telefónica intends to capitalize on the development of APIs to adjust the functions of the networks to the needs of those who use them professionally.
Telefónica and the API business
The term API refers to the acronym for Application Programming Interfaces. That is precisely the next big business with which Telefónica wants to achieve its new source of income. In fact, analysts also predict that together with Telefónica it is foreseeable that Orange and Vodafone will also begin this commercialization of services.
In the coming days or weeks, always before the celebration of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, which in 2024 will take place from Monday, February 26 to Thursday, February 29, 2024, the company will begin the commercialization of its API services.
In this way, they put themselves at the service of other companies whose applications and services work on their networks to adjust the functions of said networks according to their needs, both operational and security.
To carry out this commercialization of the toolboxes with which all developers of services that operate on networks can have access to APIs, Telefónica (like many other operators) is negotiating with large cloud services companies, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure. This remote processing capacity could be a great argument for everything to go smoothly.
Importance of the Open Gateway project
The presentation of this new business avenue before MWC 2024 will be able to show the viability of the API market at the great international telecommunications fair. It must be remembered that precisely the Open Gateway program was the star announcement of the sector in the last edition and that revenues of around 4,000 million euros are expected from it. As this project is made up of several companies, it is estimated that Telefónica could obtain a third of this income, around 1.3 billion euros, according to telecom market analysts.
The global Open Gateway project has a very interesting objective: “that all developers and all users in the world can enjoy better experiences and digital services regardless of where they are and what their network is.”
Some possible applications that are currently being tested are the following:
- Banking and insurance: several tests have already been carried out focused on anti-fraud and carrying out safer transactions.
- Media and entertainment: better performance for gamer users and immersive VR experiences, improving the connection and parameterizing the network.
- Travel, virtual training or marketing: they allow you to better profile customers, offer faster and safer check-in processes.
