Malaysian telco U Mobile announced that it has launched an Open API portal based on the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative, which also makes it the first operator in Malaysia to do so.
U Mobile – which signed an MoU to join the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative at this year’s Mobile World Congress – said the portal will provide developers, partners, and businesses access to its suite of APIs, enabling them to integrate and co-create services and solutions with the telco seamlessly.
The portal provides an intuitive interface to streamline the development process, a safe and secured isolated environment for testing and experimenting with APIs, and dedicated support and community for co-creation, collaboration, and knowledge sharing.
The telco did say the suite of open APIs will enable ease of integration of messaging, voice, data, and network services, but didn’t specify exactly which APIs will be available initially. Most Open Gateway-related launches elsewhere in the world have focused on APIs that help combat fraud.
U Mobile – which was recently declared Malaysia’s second 5G operator – added that the APIs would better help enterprises leverage 5G services,
“As Malaysia’s future second 5G network provider, we are also looking forward to collaborating with more partners to bring innovative 5G and 5G-Advanced solutions to enterprises in this AI-driven digital economy,” said U Mobile chief information officer Neil Tomkinson.
While U Mobile is the first telco in Malaysia to launch an Open API portal, it’s not the first to make use of Open APIs.
In July, rival telco Maxis (along with Thai operator AIS) signed an MoU to use Singtel’s SingVerify suite – which uses open APIs based on the GSMA Open Gateway framework – to authenticate digital identities for consumer services
That deal was rooted in a freshly launched regional telco API exchange helmed by the Bridge Alliance. The Bridge Alliance API Exchange (BAEx) leverages Singtel’s Paragon orchestration platform to aggregate its member operators’ APIs for network authentication, user verification and network quality.