Presented at SDP Asia 2012, the presentation reviews the importance of APIs to telecoms. Fundamental Misconceptions: Its about Business not Technology, Its across the Tail, not the Long Tail, Why Service Exposure matters: Quantifying the opportunity, Why all businesses are moving to APIs Understanding the Telecom situation BlueVia Case Study Verizon Case Study

1. Making Telecoms the Essential
Spice of Every Business
Ecosystem: The Slow, Painful
Rise of APIs in Telecoms
6th SDP Asia Summit
27-30 March 2012 Singapore
www.alanquayle.com/blog
© 2012 Alan Quayle Business and Service Development

2. Structure
• Fundamental Misconceptions
o Its about Business not Technology
o Its across the Tail, not the Long Tail
• Why Service Exposure matters
o Quantifying the opportunity
o Why all businesses are moving to APIs
o Understanding the Telecom situation
• BlueVia Case Study
• Verizon Case Study
• Key Points

3. Fundamental Misconceptions:
Its about Business not Technology
Go to Market
Services Wrap
Services Exposure / APIs
Network
Developer
Capabilities /
Support
Services

4. Fundamental Misconceptions:
Its Across the Tail, not the long Tail
Internal Innovation:
Eat your own dog food
Partner Innovation:
System Integrators / Content Partners
Long Tail /
Emerging Partner /
Unknown Developer

5. Telco APIs are at least a $115B per annum Business
by 2015
• Payments API (digital Goods) $2B (assumes a competitive fee of just 10%)
• Presence / Location $4.5B (note assumes a solutions based approach not just raw API revenues)
• Long tail messaging $3B (ignore short tail as aggregators do that today and internal operator politics will
limit what can be addressed with the messaging API)
• Voice Call Control $40B
• Multimedia Call Control $2B
• Advertising API $7.5B
Note this is significantly backed off the
• Hosted Unified Communications $1B
analysis I did back in 2005 (its one
• Directory $2.6B
third the size), as operators are late to
• Machine to Machine $1.5B
market, many opportunities have
• Number Provisioning $4 to $9B
significant reduced due to the entry of
• USSD API $14B (developing markets)
freemium, web-based and device-based
• Billing non-digital goods $24B business models…
• Collaboration $1B
• Content Delivery $1B
• IVR / Voice Store / other voice related VAS $2B

6. Open APIs: Why bother?
• Make money
– 60% of all listings on eBay.com added via their APIs
• Save money
– SmugMug saves > $500K/year with Amazon S3
Storage
• Build brand
– Google Maps 300% growth vs 20% MapQuest
• Move to the cloud
– Over 80% of all transactions via their API
• Go anywhere
– Netflix now available on over 250 devices
Cloud, TV, multi-devices support, communications, messaging, etc. are all now delivered through
APIs. To remain relevant and not be bypassed a comprehensive API strategy is essential to Telcos’
6 survival. Note Telcos were working on API exposure back in the ’90s.

7. Top 15 API Markets
7 Telco APIs are relevant, APIs are not just a “Web 2.0” thing

8. API Billionaires Club
28 billion API calls / month (Jan 2012)
11 billion API calls / day (Feb 2012)
19 billion API calls / day (Dec 2011)
14 billion API calls / day (Nov 2011)
12 billion API calls / month (Dec 2011)
5 billion API calls / month (Nov 2011)
2 billion API-delivered stories / month (Dec 2011)
Over 80% of all traffic via API (Jan 2012)
Over 500 billion objects stored in S3 (Jan 2012)
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9. “Why are you inventing APIs available
in most mobile SDKs? What is the
point? Why would any developer
want to restrict their apps to a single
operator when they only need to
restrict to single platform.”
source developer response to 2011 API
survey
The market is confused about operator APIs, non-operator APIs are moving fast, and there is
much prejudice against operators for the sins of the past. Partnering is essential!
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10. Some Developer Quotes from 2009
We have spent 18 months They (Orange Partner) select what
working with Orange Partner apps their customers see! How is
and achieved nothing. Its that a developer community? Isn’t
simpler to directly go to the it the customer that decides;
relevant product manager haven’t they learnt even the basics
from Apple!
AT&T and Verizon’s developer communities are
broken. We’re no longer engaged, we’ve focused
our development efforts on iPhone, Android and
Ovi because there is a clear path to cash (the
customer).
An ADC is a large Operators’ ADCs must
undertaking, Operators solve the 4 key challenges
must resource adequately facing developers:
to not repeat the problems distribution, discovery,
of the past. predictable process, and a
clear way to make money
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11. Some Developer Quotes from 2011
Even though we have direct
operator SMS connections we I’d assumed WAC had finally
work through other SMS died/been put out of its misery...
aggregators as its simply too Have not really followed much of
difficult to work with what they are trying to do. Recall
operators. it was some attempt to allow web
developers to get some mickey
mouse apps on a phone cos app
LBS
Developer
stores didn't really help that
group.
LATAM
Developer Games
We no longer waste our time with operators. Developer
Apple and Android have created direct access
to a large engaged customer base of 200M+
customers. Operators’ stores are fragmented,
with unengaged customers, unreasonable rev
shares, they don’t keep promises, and are
simply too difficult to work with.
Plus these guys are also your customers which doesn’t do you any favors!
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12. General Developers’
Perspective of the
Initiatives
+ they only really
need 2 things…
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13. A Large Engaged Customer Base
Apple + Android >300M customers
13

14. A Clear Path to Cash
$$$
Note the big brands, e.g. FT, already have these so can use
additional mechanisms such as the high street, web, TV, etc.
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15. Telecom API Myths

16. APIs are ONLY a method to deliver a service,
it’s a bit of technology, its irrelevant to the buyers.
The focus has to be on the service (solution to a
business problem), e.g. the Mobile Payment Service.
When your brand is on an F1 car, the product does not
need to be sold, its brand is marketed.
Operators are marketing not sales machines.

17. Put Simply
• Telcos need partners to sell services (business solutions) delivered
through APIs.
o Verizon and Telenor both achieved success through partnering.
o Telcos have little experience in business development and competitive sales
processes where customer inaction is the dominant state.
• An API is just a piece of technology to deliver a service which solves a
business problem.
o Focus on the business problems your APIs can economically solve with your
partners.
o Focus where Telcos are strong: Communications and Billing.
• API standards are NOT necessary for API launch.
o Focus on what works and copy that, like every over industry.

19. BlueVia takes a Different Approach
• BlueVia is based on the learning from O2 Litmus and Open Telefonica.
o O2 / BTCellnet’s history of developer communities stems back over 10 years
• Undertaken extensive developer surveys and listened to the many developer
frustrations
o Developers were pushed to Apple and Android after operators raised expectations then
abandoned developers in the previous 7 years
o BlueVia’s model should be part of every operators business model options
• BlueVia makes several critical assumptions
o Customers pay for APIs and developers share in the stimulated revenue (traffic and / or
advertising), this enables Telefonica to claim they pay developers to use their APIs!
o APIs can be used across apps, web pages or business processes, Telefonica does not
expect applications to go into the Telefonica app store
• Clear differentiation from other operator initiatives

20. BlueVia Principles
• Global developer platform (not community) that helps take apps,
web services and ideas to market
• Built on four principles
o Scale
o Tools
o Business Models
o Path to Market
• Web standards: Oauth, REST
• Zero financial risk to developer
• Low friction, plug and play

22. Keys to BlueVia’s Success
• Open and honest approach to the market recognizing the challenge
operator APIs have in being relevant to developers; and
• Willingness to experiment and explore new technologies and
business models to meet developers’ needs.

23. 23
2011 Alan Quayle

24. Case Study: Location Enhanced Call Center
• Helping callers even when they don’t know where they are to reduce costly dispatch
mistakes and to substantially reduce the costs of customer service time by reducing service
call duration.
• Automatically routing calls made to a central number to the local point of sale to leverage
the personal service from local stores and franchises to close more sales and deliver better
service.
• Reducing the hassle and time in
answering the question
“Where are you?” to realize
operator cost savings and
improve customer satisfaction.
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25. Case Study: Location Enhanced Call Center
• Technocom (Aggregator) has integrated Verizon’s location and messaging APIs
into its Location‐enhanced Call Center and IVR Services
• FleetNet America, Inc. (www.fleetnetamerica.com), a third-party vendor
management company that coordinates emergency roadside assistance and
maintenance management for all types of commercial equipment.
o When someone breaks down and calls roadside assistance, the IVR will confirm it’s OK
to get the person’s location for only this call.
o As the agent has the location information, time is saved and human error is removed.
o Then when the truck is scheduled, an SMS is sent to the person with the truck’s
estimated arrive time and contact information, which again saves call center agent time.
o The savings enabled by the location and messaging API can be in the order of tens of
dollars, so the API charges are negligible.
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26. Keys to Verizon’s Success
• Partners such as Technocom and Loc-aid translate the APIs into
business solutions for enterprise customers; and
• Verizon has implemented a privacy framework that put the
customer in control of their information, yet is easy to use by its
partners creating a slick privacy experience.

27. Overall Points
• Its about partnering and business development – rare skills in an
operator
• You do not want nor need a developer community
• Standards do not matter – follow the current OneAPI activity not
OMA and copy others’ success
• Talk to other operators – we need to work together on making
business happen not grandiose standards activities