During this year’s Mobile World Congress, the GSMA announced a game-changing initiative called Open Gateway. It aims to revolutionize how operators collaborate with developers and each other, with the goal of opening up new revenue streams beyond traditional rate plans through the use of network APIs. 

For this episode, I sat down to talk with GSMA Director General Mats Granryd about the Open Gateway initiative and how network APIs may be the future of enterprise telco. Click play to hear our conversation about: 

• How opening networks will help telcos monetize 5G capabilities [03:29];
• Why telcos are excited about Open Gateway and jumping on board [05:42];
• The shift that’s needed to make telcos easier for developers to work with [08:59];
• Strategies to attract enterprise IT developers to use Open Gateway APIs [13:55]; and
• How 5G can enable new technical monetization models [16:23].

Links and Resources

• I thought my conversation with Mats was so important that I flew across the Atlantic to meet with him in person. We met at The Shard in the center of London and recorded our interview, which you can watch here. Check out that view!
• Learn more about the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative.
• Surely you heard the news that TelcoDR bought Kandy, a CPaaS company, out of bankruptcy in March of this year.
• Be sure to catch the announcement of a new Totogi’s CPaaS product that will help telcos take on Twilio. I’ll be sharing a video about it on September 5 as part of TelecomTV’s Cloud Native Telco Summit. Don’t miss it—it’s MUST-SEE TV!
• Come meet with the Totogi team at TM Forum’s DTW - Ignite in Copenhagen on September 19 - 21 so we can give you a demo and snag an invite to the launch party. DM me on X or LinkedIn for details and an invite.
• Twilio has been running circles around telco, taking the enterprise IT developers and owning the platform. Read this monster blog I wrote about why it happened in Telco execs: Are you jealous of Twilio?
• View the transcript for this episode.
• I caught a few Wimbledon matches while I was in the UK. Check out this montage of 2023 highlights.

Wanna talk public cloud? Telco execs, set up a meeting with our team to learn how to tap the immense business value it can bring.

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This week’s guest

About Mats Granryd

Mats Granryd is Director General of the GSMA and a member of its Board. He leads the GSMA in supporting its global membership across three broad pillars: Connectivity for Good, Industry Services and Solutions, and Outreach. Under Mats’ leadership, the GSMA has been instrumental in the advent of the 5G Era, advocating for timely and affordable spectrum access, supporting the global rollout of 5G and mobile IoT networks, creating an eSIM solution and providing the world’s largest platform to convene the mobile ecosystem and industry verticals at the MWC and M360 series of events.

Podcast Credits

• Executive Producer and Host: Danielle Royston, TelcoDR
• Senior Producer: Lindsay Grubb, TillCo Media
• Editor/Marketing: Alisa Jenkins, Springboard Marketing
• Editing: Andrew Condell
• Associate Producer: Kriselda Dionisio
• Music: Dyami Wilson