TM Forum Australian Spec Jam accelerates development of Gen 5 Open APIs

Expert API developers converged on Melbourne in the week of 9th-13th October as Telstra hosted the TM Forum Open API Spec Jam. Telstra’s Group Executive of Global Networks and Technology, Nikos Katinakis, and TM Forum Director, Mike Lawrey, provided opening keynote addresses welcoming API developers from around the globe.

The TM Forum's Open API program is a global initiative that seeks to establish seamless connectivity, promote interoperability, and ensure portability across a multifaceted ecosystem of services. It empowers us to build more agile, decoupled, and adaptive networks capable of meeting both current and future technological demands.

During the week, enormous progress was made across the following areas:

Many Gen5 Open APIs for Service Management were completed and endorsed:

• TMF640 Service Activation
• TMF638 Service Inventory
• TMF641 Service Orders
• TMF645 Service Qualification
• TMF656 Service Problem
• TMF727 Service Usage
• TMF727 Service Usage

Significant progress made on other Gen5 Service Management APIs, including:

• TMF653 Service Test
• TMF764 Cost Management

Significant progress made on Domain Context Specialization (DCS) APIs, including:

• TMF924 5G Slice Service Activation DCS API
• TMF935 Wholesale Carrier Ethernet Product Ordering DCS API

Telstra firmly believes in the advantages offered by the TM Forum Open API program. It has been instrumental in driving its Enterprise-wide technology architecture transformation, leveraging a composable API-driven framework as defined in their reference architecture, TRAM (Telstra Reference Architecture Model).

Co-sponsors and SaaS Platform Leader CSG is committed to furthering the ideals of industry-wide interoperability by adoption of standardized APIs, and to supporting the TM Forum in extending this goal into partner domains to achieve a true zero-touch marketplace.

The DCS design patterns established over the course of this Spec Jam will provide a crucial design reference for the TM Forum Open API community to expand coverage across further domains, bringing to reality the award-winning business impact of the Channels & Markets Catalyst that Telstra and CSG collaborated on over the course of this year.

Overall, this week has resulted in user-friendly, technology-specific Open APIs designed to optimize interoperability and simplicity, empowering our industry to employ these APIs consistently, within specific domain contexts, thereby enhancing the overall developer experience.

These TM Forum Spec Jams are a great way to accelerate delivery of Open APIs that enable business. It is through these collaborative endeavors that we can tackle the challenges and seize the opportunities to shape the future of telecommunications.