Huawei, GSMA pin 5G hopes on open APIs, pricing

GSMA, the biggest telecom industry organization, and Huawei, the largest vendor, are pinning their hopes on pricing innovation and open APIs to drive 5G growth.

Speaking at the Huawei-organized mobile broadband forum on Tuesday, GSMA director general Mats Granryd and current Huawei chairman Ken Hu offered their views on priorities for the industry as it seeks a way to recoup its heavy 5G investments.

Granryd said the open gateway initiative, unveiled at MWC Barcelona in February, was a way to entice new business segments to work with telcos.

The scheme was allowing app developers, hyperscalers and others to create common APIs on 5G networks that could be shared across the operator community, he said. “You can sort of see this open gateway as [like] roaming, but API roaming,” he noted.

He said close to 240 mobile operators had signed up, accounting for more than 60% of the world's mobile subs, with three “commercial-first” APIs announced a couple of weeks ago. Last month, Deutsche Telekom and Ericsson announced plans for a global API network platform.

Huawei's Hu agreed the telecom sector needed to “activate the ecosystem” and that the open gateway would allow developers to make full use of the 5G network. He said the open gateway would also help develop the partnerships and the vertical industry capabilities in the 5G enterprise market. 

Hu called on telcos to adopt more innovative consumer pricing strategies, charging users not just for data volumes but also for differentiated speed and latency performance.

'I would pay more'

“If you can really make the speed as a differentiator of the user experience, I would pay more for that,” he said.

But Granryd noted mobile operators are challenged by their financial outlook, facing estimated outlays of US$1.5 trillion between now and 2030, of which 90% will go to 5G. “We need to come up with new business models and we need to drive this industry into a more profitable and sustainable situation,” he said.

He also said this was why GSMA had launched its 'fair share' campaign, calling on hyperscale players to contribute financially to the cost of delivering their content.

The campaign is currently confined to Europe, but discussions were “ongoing in other parts of the world,” Granryd said. “That's one example of us trying to make sure that this industry is healthy and sustainable,” he added.