French telecommunications giant Orange has announced a strategic partnership with Nokia, aiming to broaden the reach of its network APIs. This collaboration will leverage Nokia’s Network as Code platform, incorporating a developer portal to invigorate the 5G market and stimulate revenue growth.
This agreement allows application developers to experiment with Orange’s network APIs, potentially developing innovative solutions to rejuvenate the 5G sector. The initiative spans Orange’s European market, encompassing approximately 100 million mobile customers, presenting a substantial opportunity for developers.
Orange’s existing API portal, which includes a wide range of categories such as communications, payments, IoT, and authentication, will be significantly enhanced by Nokia’s platform. This advancement will expand the variety of open network APIs in alignment with the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative and the Linux Foundation’s CAMARA working group standards.
The partnership will also offer pre-commercial support for use cases, capitalizing on both companies’ expertise in network APIs. Initially launched as a pilot program, the initiative will be rolled out in selected European countries through Orange’s 5G labs.
According to Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia, this collaboration marks a crucial development in their relationship with Orange, enhancing network programmability and monetization efforts. The partnership reflects a broader trend among telecom operators to create multiple channels for marketing their APIs, as evidenced by Nokia’s recent collaboration with CPaaS provider Infobip and Deutsche Telekom’s alliance with Ericsson’s Vonage unit.
Orange’s CTO Laurent Leboucher highlighted the significance of this partnership, emphasizing the innovative business use cases enabled by this new level of collaboration. The initiative underscores the enhanced cooperation among operators, system integrators, developers, and partners, leveraging the cloud-native capabilities of Orange’s 5G network.
To kick off the partnership, Orange and Nokia are co-hosting a Network as Code Hackathon at the Viva Tech conference in Paris, aiming to further engage the developer community and foster innovation in the 5G ecosystem.
