In one of the biggest telco API agreements to date, regional telco group Bridge Alliance has won the backing of 13 operator members for its new API exchange.

The first API on the Bridge Alliance API Exchange (BAEx) is authentication to support digital transactions, with future APIs planned to support eKYC (electronic know your customer) and QoD (Quality-of-service on Demand), the company said.

Its initial enterprise customer is fintech firm V-Tech, which has developed a digital identity solution that it integrates with the API.

The BAEx initiative is driven by Singtel and is based on its Paragon orchestration platform. Singtel group operators such as Airtel and Optus are among the telcos backing BAEx, along with others including China Unicom, SK Telecom and Taiwan Mobile.

Shanthi Ravindran, principal analyst at Appledore Research, says authentication is a query type of API that is the most common early API being implemented by operators, supporting applications relating to fraud prevention, identity and location.

The other type of API, known as active network change, is slower to gain traction, but she points to Singtel and Telstra offering network slices, and Malaysian operator DNB showcasing intent-based operations. 

Carried away

The broad swathe of regional operators backing Bridge Alliance addresses one of the biggest problems telcos face in developing APIs, which is geographical fragmentation.

Nik Willetts, CEO of TM Forum, says that while telcos are attractive to businesses for their huge volumes of customer data, developers are not interested in single countries.

"I think the API story has got a little carried away with itself in terms of what the APIs themselves can do," he said in a podcast discussion with Appledore Research. "Simply exposing an API doesn't really do much."

He welcomes the speed at which telcos are rolling out APIs, but cautions that the challenge for the industry is to create products with "global recognition, global groups, global coverage [and] even some level of harmonization of pricing."

"We've got lots of examples where companies like Netflix and others have tried to create global packages with telcos and found that extremely difficult to do, even within a group business."

ABI Research says the telco network APIs are "generating significant buzz" but it is still a nascent market, pointing out that API definitions are evolving and initial projects are still being spun up to stimulate the market.

But it predicts solid growth over the next five years, forecasting total revenue of $13.4 billion in 2028, driven by security and network slicing APIs.