CAMARA APIs for network to application integration

What is it about?

Network as a Service (NaaS) allows operators to expose network capabilities to 3rd parties in a programmatic manner (through APIs), offering them consumer-like experience with choice, scalability, visibility and control. After several years in scope of research, NaaS is now gaining momentum in industry. Proof of this is that the Linux Foundation and the GSMA have together unveiled a new open source project called CAMARA, which has the mission to create an open, global and accessible portfolio of APIs for developers and customers, so that they can access operator capabilities and consume them as per their service needs. This exposure allows for service-tailored network programmability and frictionless network-application integration, strengthening ties between operators and 3rd parties for service co-creation. In this article, we present the "Quality on Demand API", the first NaaS API published and vali- dated by CAMARA. The implementation and validation of this API is showcased in a relevant business case for operators, based on connecting end-users with a 3rd party video streaming server using a 5G stand-alone network.

Featured Image

Why is it important?

Our paper explain how to build and integrate open and user-friendly APIs for 3rd party applications to consume telco capabilities, in accordance to the guidelines propelled by CAMARA, a joint initiative between GSMA (reference telco association) and LF (top-tier cloud community). It also showcases the usage of the first API defined in CAMARA, Quality of Demand (QoD) API, involving a Tier-1 (CSP, API producer) and a large-scale streaming service provider (3rd party, API consumer). This API allows a 3rd party application to programmatically act upon the QoD settings of selected mobile sessions, and configure (e.g. change) them on-demand.