Integration of telecommunications APIs with AWS

And thanks for joining this 20 minute session as we dive into application programming interfaces. What's happening in the telecommunications industry, why it matters to you and how AWS is looking to help.

So if you're a telco looking to grow your revenue streams, or if you're an AWS customer, partner or developer looking to generate new experiences or enhance existing experiences, then I hope you're gonna gain something from this session.

In this lightning talk, we'll be looking at the integration of telecommunication APIs with AWS. I'm Zan Cell and I have the honor of overseeing AWS's hybrid edge go-to-market efforts in collaboration with telcos.

So fresh out of college, I aspire to be an IT professional. So I went about learning how to program. I soon found out that wasn't enough, you needed to understand storage, you needed to understand databases, you needed to understand infrastructure. So then I found myself involved with the launch of 3G, third generation networks.

This is when data and applications were first delivered to us on mobile devices and to give you some context today, we're at the fifth generation. Well, it was an extremely frustrating experience because no matter how much we optimize our applications, how much we leverage and facilitate our storage and configure our infrastructure, we still couldn't deliver the customer experience that we wanted and that our customers expected.

And the reason why is because the red thread that binds the application, the storage, the database and the infrastructure, the thing that I had always taken for granted and the thing that was out of reach, I had no control of. And of course, I'm referring to the network, I'm referring to connectivity.

Well, times have changed, that was 17 years ago. Now today we have the benefits of cloud which brings us all together at this amazing event. Also, the other revolutionary thing that's happening is that networks are now becoming programmable. You as developers are able to extract information from the networks, the networks are becoming programmable.

How many of you show of hands have had the opportunity to work and integrate with telco APIs today? Wow, I'm impressed. Thank you so much. So there's a few within the audience that have, there's others that have not yet. And that's because we're really at the intersection point where telco APIs are starting to become available.

So let's dive in together and understand what's happening. Telecommunications companies, telcos are looking to convert their networks into programmable service platforms. What this means is for a telco, it's an opportunity to generate new revenue and monetize the huge investments it takes to bring connectivity to us.

The other thing that's happening is that for we developers, we then are able to be decoupled from the constraints of over the top best effort networks. And now we're able to tap into that to generate and create new and improved experiences.

Now APIs in the telecommunications industry is nothing new. They've been around for decades and the same with standards, standards are absolutely critical within the telecommunications industry. It's what enables us to speak to our friends in different geographies and across different networks.

So you may be asking yourself, well, what's changing? What's changing is the fact that they're now being brought to you the developer and there's a number of standard bodies that are working to bring, make this a reality and to make this possible.

One is the Kamara project. Now, the Kamara project is the first open source initiative within the telecommunications industry that is looking to bring service APIs to the developer community. And the Kamara project has a growing number of repositories available today.

Then there's the GSMA Open Gateway framework. Now this is a framework that collaborates with Kamara and think of the Open Gateway project as a way to bring universal access. There's 21 telcos and growing that are currently involved in the Open Gateway initiative. And they are really the glue between the technology and the commercialization, think of the Kamara project as northbound APIs and think of the GSMA Open Gateway as east to west, the glue.

Then you have the TM Forum, the TM Forum is working on a number of APIs that really bring the operations and maintenance capabilities that allows the commercialization and productization of these APIs.

You also have the 5G Future Forum. This is a collection of eight telcos that are looking to build an ecosystem around multi-access edge computing. And today are working on the concept of bidirectional APIs between the telco and cloud providers like AWS.

Holistically, all these initiatives are seen as or viewed as and what I'll be referring to as telco APIs. There's a number of APIs that we're starting to see uptake with. Let's dive into a few of them.

The first one is Quality on Demand. The Quality on Demand API is the ability for you as an application developer to request stability of latency and throughput in the data flows between the application client and the application server. So you can imagine for a company like Sinfo that specializes in streaming services at the lowest cost, it's an attractive proposition to be able to leverage an API on quality of demand.

Network Verification is another API. Network Verification allows you to authenticate the user with the mobile device. So you can imagine this replacing those clunky SMS one-time password authentication mechanisms that we experience today.

Third one is Device Location, Device Location allows you to map a mobile device to the proximity of a given location. Now, you can imagine how this could be used for traffic routing. Imagine this being used for geo-based marketing and one that I'm particularly excited about is its use in fraud detection.

I think we can all relate to those somewhat embarrassing moments when you get to the checkout, you've made your purchasing decision and all of a sudden your transaction is declined and you have to then contact your bank and understand or try to justify that it is in fact you. Well, this could all go away with an API such as this.

So we're very excited to be working in collaboration with the likes of Los who provide AI based enhanced location services on how an API such as this might be incorporated into their service experience.

So what if, what if telco APIs could be consumed with the same developer experience, the same units of economy and the same global reach that you're able to consume AWS compute and storage with today?

There's a natural fit here between AWS and the standards organizations that are working on telco APIs. Both the standard bodies and AWS work backwards from customers. We're obsessed with what customers need and we develop in agile and fast manners.

Another good example of where there's a natural fit is in the desire to bring scale and global reach to telco APIs. AWS with our footprint of 102 regions and 32 sorry 102 availability zones and 32 regions naturally plays into the ability to bring that global scale and reach to telco APIs.

And that's why we as AWS are working very closely with the forums, with the standard bodies, with telcos to bring network APIs to our developer community.

We as AWS are well accustomed to APIs. It's the way in which we build our service architecture. It's the way in which our internal teams speak and communicate with each other. It allows well-defined APIs to determine how we work independently and also collaborate together.

We have thousands of APIs within AWS today. Amazon EC2 has over 200. Amazon S3 has over 100 and 60. Amazon VPC has over 100 and 20. Yeah. These APIs are the way in which you developers interact and consume the cloud and we are very excited and working hard to bring these APIs, telco APIs to a thriving developer community.

The AWS developer community that spans enterprise, system integrators, startups. It's a very exciting prospect to tap into this thriving ecosystem of developers.

So how does it all fit together? How does it all come together? It starts with the networks, the telcos exposing their capabilities through telco APIs. These are then exposed to you through service APIs through the Kamara project that has the service doctrine.

Then you have the GSMA Open Gateway initiative and view them as the technology doctrine supported by the TM Forum with the operations doctrine. And then the 5G Future Forum looking to bring in and incorporate multi-access edge compute.

There's gonna be various routes to market with telco APIs. There's going to be direct routes to market where the telcos bring the APIs directly to you. Then there's gonna be collaboration between the telcos where some telcos will look to aggregate and federate APIs and bring them to you.

Then there's also the partners, AWS partners, the likes of Ericsson, Vodafone and Twilio. These are communications platform as a service partners of ours that are looking to combine their own services and own APIs with those telco with the telco APIs to generate new experiences.

And this is where it gets really exciting. It's about how our partners can leverage the marketplace, our partner network, how they can leverage their services, their APIs, how they can leverage telco APIs and how you can combine that with the thousands of AWS APIs and the 200 plus services.

If the AWS developer community can tap into all of that, it's going to be fascinating to see the network aware applications that the developers build with the same credentials that you enjoy with AWS cloud today in a seamless developer experience and environment.

Let's dive into a demo of what that experience could look like of building with APIs on AWS. This is a demo that takes an existing authentication application using the SIM swap API.

So first of all the user enters their username followed by their phone number. On clicking next, the application raises a warning advising the user that the SIM card has been swapped and prevents the user from proceeding with the application.

So what's happening here on the click of the next button? The request is sent to the Amazon API Gateway which in turn processes the user to a user ID method. Now that user ID method checks whether the user is registered and then connects to the AWS Lambda function.

Now it's in the AWS Lambda function where the telco API logic is embedded. Let's have a look at an implementation of the telco API logic.

So the authentication method is called first and that returns an access token. The access token is then passed alongside the or with the SIM swap API alongside the phone number, the MSISDN that the user inputted for the SIM that has been swapped.

So where do you as a developer embed the logic? It really is up to you, you can decide because our microservice based architecture using AWS Step Functions allows you to embed this logic where you want it and where you need it.

And as you'll see here, there's an example of how we've also incorporated Amazon Rekognition into this service. So then how is the error thrown? Well, this is used using React Forms and AWS Amplify where the API depending on what's returned in this instance, raises the error that you see here.

So a simple demo showing how a telco API could be incorporated into an AWS environment along with other AWS services.

We've got some pretty cool demos behind me today which are showcasing the use of telco APIs with AWS. The first one uses the Network Exposure Function API and Network Data Analytics Function to enable a developer to bring use cases based on 5G to market in an accelerated time. This is done using AI. It's done using Amazon Bedrock and Code Whisperer in conjunction with our partners, Mavenir and Byron.

The second demo is one that's very close to my heart because before I aspired to be an IT professional, I actually aspired to be the next Beatle. I wanted to be a rock star. And beyond the realization that I actually lacked any natural talent, there was also another barrier and that barrier was the fact that I had to traverse the English countryside every evening to get to my bandmates to do the rehearsals.

This demo showcases how musicians in different geographical locations can synchronize sound seamlessly. It's done using the 5G and I'm very excited about this. This is the first time we worked with Verizon on the exposure of their Quality of Service API so you can see this being used in real time today alongside AWS Wavelength for edge compute. And it's done in conjunction with our partners Open Sesame and their Sync Stage application.

If you've not had a chance to check out these demos, I highly encourage you to do so.

So at AWS, it's day one, it's always day one. We're always listening, learning and considering how we can best help developers tap into the exposed APIs.

We've got a set of guiding principles that's gonna help steer us on this journey. The first one is, it starts with the developer experience so that you the developers can enjoy a consistent cloud environment which will remove the ambiguity and the complexity of the various standard bodies and APIs that exist today. And of course, that will aid you in discovery and procurement and giving you the flexibilities with telco APIs that you enjoy today with the cloud.

And as I mentioned, the most exciting thing is enabling you as developers to combine telco APIs with partner APIs with AWS APIs to create new and exciting experiences.

If you want to discover more about how AWS is working with telcos and partners, I would encourage you to check out this QR code here, you'll find out how AWS is transforming telco's digital industries and reimagining the consumer experience.

We as AWS believe in the power of telco APIs. We believe that telco APIs are going to offer an opportunity for telcos to generate new revenue streams. And for the developer community to build and enhance our experiences.

We as AWS are well positioned to help with this by not only enabling the programmability of the networks but doing so with the same developer experience, units of economics and global scale that you enjoy today.

I'm very keen to continue talking to you around this and I'll be available at the demos that I mentioned just behind this stage. I would love it if you were to come over and share your experiences and what you're looking for from AWS in terms of this journey that we're embarking on.

And if we're unable to connect at Re:Invent, I would encourage you to reach out through the contact details that are displayed on the screen.

Thank you very much for diving in with me to explore how APIs are shaping the telco industry, why it matters to you and what AWS is doing to help.

Thank you very much for building with AWS. Appreciate it. Thank you.