Late last year, Mind Commerce released a report about the current state and future of the telecom API market. APIs are a well-known software function within the IT software development community. Now, more organizations are leveraging APIs to expand their services and collaborate more closely with application developers and third-party service providers.
In addition, CSPs are increasingly relying on telecom APIs to integrate voice and messaging capabilities into their unified communications, communications platform-as-a-service (CPaaS) and contact center-as-a-service (CCaaS) offerings. When businesses work with their CSPs to incorporate telecom APIs into their applications, they expand communication capabilities for their customers, thereby advancing telecom innovation, business growth and the overall customer experience.
On the backend, telecom APIs open the door for carriers to capitalize on existing network infrastructure to create a vast array of assets they can use to drive revenue. When these assets are integrated within applications using APIs, they expand the capabilities and strengthen the value of the network.
According to Mind Commerce’s report, growth and support of IP enabled networks has proven to be an excellent source of revenue for some telecom API vendors; however, other providers are focusing on emerging technologies such as robotics and business automation to strengthen and diversify API integrations. Outlined below are two of those next generation use cases.
IoT
IoT represents a large and mostly untouched market for CSPs, which Mind Commerce sees emerging once carriers begin to fully leverage 5G for IoT apps and services. Carriers can orchestrate and/or mediate from within the IoT ecosystem to provide various critical services such as IoT authentication, authorization and accounting. This will include use of telecom API resources to help manage IoT-related access control, permissions and usage tracking.
Mobile Edge Computing (MEC)
Carriers are also well positioned to leverage telecom APIs to support many edge computing use cases as MEC optimizes LTE, 5G and IoT. According to the report, many MEC use cases require support from multiple telecom API categories (i.e. location, presence, subscriber data and QoS) in support of zone-based enterprise apps, services and data analytics. In the future, this will create both a challenge and opportunity for CSPs that will need the assistance of third-party service providers for ongoing operations.
How Shifting Remote Business Strategies Will Impact Adoption of Telecom APIs
Since the start of the global COVID-19 pandemic, businesses have turned to remote work as a way to keep employees safe and drive business operations forward. Telecom APIs have played a vital role in keeping teams connected internally as well as keeping businesses connected to their customers.
The scalability of APIs has helped businesses quickly adapt to evolving communications needs – something that will be of continued relevance moving forward into the uncertain future. API adoption will grow as CPaaS rely on APIs to support real-time connectivity and collaboration via email, voice and video software.
With telecom APIs, businesses can easily and instantly purchase, port, provision and configure voice and messaging services with direct access to and control over high-quality telephony resources. Mind Commerce predicts that the global telecom API market will grow to be worth nearly $700 billion by 2026. With telecom APIs, business leaders can pick and choose services that will evolve with their needs.
How Flowroute Can Help
Flowroute empowers businesses in building voice and texting applications with services like appointment reminders, two-factor authentication, routing functions, phone masking and numbering functions. Our APIs are used by a variety of customers focused on improving communications in-house and to their end users. Check out our API library.
