Orange and Nokia announced that they are expanding their partnership to advance network programmability and monetization. Using Nokia’s Network as Code platform with developer portal, developers will be able to test and take advantage of Orange's 5G network capabilities to create applications for customers in France and other parts of Europe.
Orange, one of Europe’s leading telecommunications providers with more than 280 million mobile subscribers, is already providing commercial production grade network API capabilities to developers using the Orange Developer Portal.
Orange aims to accelerate and further tap into the global ecosystem of developers and unlock 5G network capabilities such as dynamic bandwidth allocation, real-time location insights, predictive maintenance, and event-driven triggers for security and safety responses.
To make that happen, Nokia’s Network as Code platform with developer portal will provide application developers with access to Software Development Kits (SDK); Network API documentation, a ‘sandbox’ to create software code for use case simulation and testing; and code ‘snippets’ that can be included in new applications in addition to Orange Developer Portal.
As a result of this expanded partnership, an extension of Orange and Nokia’s long-standing relationship, developers will have the tools to leverage Orange’s network features, develop new use cases, and create new value for developer and Orange customers.
As part of the first step in their network API collaboration, Orange and Nokia will co-host a "Network as Code Hackathon” on May 23-24 at France's premier tech start-up conference, Viva Tech. This hackathon will provide a forum for developers to build new, innovative use cases and applications using Nokia’s Network as Code platform with developer portal.
Going forward, as part of the expanded partnership, Orange and Nokia will further engage with the developer community by enabling pre-commercial use case support while leveraging network API expertise and network capabilities provided by both partners. This pilot program will become available progressively in select European countries at first by leveraging Orange 5G Labs network.
Nokia’s Network as Code platform with developer portal brings together telco networks, systems integrators, and software developers from around the world into a unified ecosystem to accelerate the development of software applications that can harness the untapped capabilities of 5G and 4G networks.
The platform uses technical standards produced through industry initiatives such as the GSMA Open Gateway initiative and the Linux Foundation CAMARA. Nokia and Orange contribute to both initiatives. Orange has already implemented Linux Foundation CAMARA’s guidelines and first commercial grade APIs are available in France and Spain.
Nokia has signed collaboration agreements with 12 network operators and ecosystem partners around the world to use its Network as Code platform with developer portal.
Laurent Leboucher, Group CTO at Orange, said: “We are very pleased to open another area of collaboration with Nokia that enables compelling business use cases to consume our network assets in ways that were not really feasible years ago. Today, the level of collaboration among operators, system integrators, developers, and partners, is a step change and this is positioning us to better tap the cloud-native capabilities built into Orange’s 5G network.”
Raghav Sahgal, President of Cloud and Network Services at Nokia, said: “This is an important step in our relationship with Orange and further validation of the steps we are taking in the API journey to help customers achieve network programmability and monetization. We look forward to our continued close cooperation with developers to create and drive new opportunities that support Orange in delivering even more value from its network assets.”