China Mobile explores ‘industry-first’ blockchain use case
The DAPP-based Capability Exposure and Marketplace Catalyst explores a new way for telcos to monetize their assets through decentralized applications.
07 Nov 2019
China Mobile explores ‘industry-first’ blockchain use case
The DAPP-based Capability Exposure and Marketplace Catalyst explores a new way for telcos to monetize their assets through decentralized applications.
Several blockchain use cases have been explored by telecom companies, including international roaming settlement, service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring and identity management.
Now, China Mobile and a team of partners have come up with what they say is a brand new one – using blockchain to enable telcos to turn ‘inside out’ by making their different capabilities available for the development of decentralized applications (DAPP). This will allow them to generate new revenue from app calls and data usage as well as position themselves as engines for innovation.
The approach stands to help communications service providers (CSPs) such as China Mobile take a significant step towards their ambitions to become digital service providers via a platform business model.
A TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst project, including China Mobile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), AsiaInfo and Newland, is working to develop a reference implementation of a decentralized application (DAPP)-based capability exposure platform and marketplace.
At Digital Transformation Asia (November 12-14: Kuala Lumpur) they will showcase the technological and process requirements which would enable such a system and demonstrate various use cases which highlight the benefits for each of the stakeholders in the platform ecosystem – the CSP, partners and developers, and the end-users themselves.
The platform could also allow other third-party companies to provide their APIs and onboard in the marketplace.The DAPP-based Capability Exposure and Marketplace Catalyst will show:
For example, the APIs could be used to develop and test tools such a ‘top-up’ application which allows the end-user (such as a gaming company) to increase network resources to meet demand or gamers themselves to increase data to reduce latency. The DAPP could be embedded on e-commerce websites or within a gaming app.
The platform will allow telcos to make their APIs available to developers and settle payments automatically using tokens via smart contracts – this ensures trust for all stakeholders and will allow CSPs to drastically scale the number of partners they can work with by removing manual settlements.
Further, CSPs can offer rewards to developers who create apps which generate a significant number of API calls or onboard high numbers of end-users. They could either provide more tokens to the developer to give them some API calls free of charge or they could offer ‘superstar developers’ access to additional premium APIs. This gamification incentivizes developers to not only create apps but to promote usage too, increasing the benefits for all in the ecosystem – the ‘network effect’.
The architecture is based on three layers as below:
Several blockchain use cases have been explored by telecom companies, including international roaming settlement, service-level agreement (SLA) monitoring and identity management.
Now, China Mobile and a team of partners have come up with what they say is a brand new one – using blockchain to enable telcos to turn ‘inside out’ by making their different capabilities available for the development of decentralized applications (DAPP). This will allow them to generate new revenue from app calls and data usage as well as position themselves as engines for innovation.
The approach stands to help communications service providers (CSPs) such as China Mobile take a significant step towards their ambitions to become digital service providers via a platform business model.
A TM Forum proof-of-concept Catalyst project, including China Mobile, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), AsiaInfo and Newland, is working to develop a reference implementation of a decentralized application (DAPP)-based capability exposure platform and marketplace.
At Digital Transformation Asia (November 12-14: Kuala Lumpur) they will showcase the technological and process requirements which would enable such a system and demonstrate various use cases which highlight the benefits for each of the stakeholders in the platform ecosystem – the CSP, partners and developers, and the end-users themselves.
The platform could also allow other third-party companies to provide their APIs and onboard in the marketplace.The DAPP-based Capability Exposure and Marketplace Catalyst will show:
- How CSPs can expose network capabilities such as end-to-end assurance, data analytics, security, and charging and billing, etc. via APIs as digital assets in a blockchain and onboard them in the marketplace
- How partners and developers can find the necessary APIs and build decentralized applications easily, then onboard the DAPPs in the marketplace
- How end users can find the most useful DAPPs easily from the marketplace
- How payments can be settled among CSPs, partners and end-users based on smart contracts and tokens
For example, the APIs could be used to develop and test tools such a ‘top-up’ application which allows the end-user (such as a gaming company) to increase network resources to meet demand or gamers themselves to increase data to reduce latency. The DAPP could be embedded on e-commerce websites or within a gaming app.
“This Catalyst is innovative because carriers have not so far leveraged blockchain technology for capability exposure for the creation of DAPPs, said Mujin Liu, senior product manager, HPE. “It gives CSPs a new way to participate in the decentralized economy.”
Trust built in
The platform will allow telcos to make their APIs available to developers and settle payments automatically using tokens via smart contracts – this ensures trust for all stakeholders and will allow CSPs to drastically scale the number of partners they can work with by removing manual settlements.
Further, CSPs can offer rewards to developers who create apps which generate a significant number of API calls or onboard high numbers of end-users. They could either provide more tokens to the developer to give them some API calls free of charge or they could offer ‘superstar developers’ access to additional premium APIs. This gamification incentivizes developers to not only create apps but to promote usage too, increasing the benefits for all in the ecosystem – the ‘network effect’.
Under the hood
The architecture is based on three layers as below:
It supports functional programming to speed up and simplify app development and deployment.
The platform is based on and will contribute back to TM Forum’s collaborative tools and best practices, particularly the Open API program.
The team is using the following TM Forum APIs: Product catalog, Product ordering, Customer management, Appointment and Party management.
Their work will provide some key extensions back for the benefit of the whole TM Forum membership community, including new hierarchical structure information for the Product Catalog API.
The team is also creating a whitepaper which will help other telcos benefit from this new blockchain use case.
See the Catalyst in Action at Digital Transformation Asia (12-14 November: Kuala Lumpur).
The platform is based on and will contribute back to TM Forum’s collaborative tools and best practices, particularly the Open API program.
The team is using the following TM Forum APIs: Product catalog, Product ordering, Customer management, Appointment and Party management.
Their work will provide some key extensions back for the benefit of the whole TM Forum membership community, including new hierarchical structure information for the Product Catalog API.
The team is also creating a whitepaper which will help other telcos benefit from this new blockchain use case.
See the Catalyst in Action at Digital Transformation Asia (12-14 November: Kuala Lumpur).
