The Programmable 5G Network and API Ecosystem

The cellular telecom industry is at the cusp of a major shift driven by several factors, both opportunistic and contextual. In the large technology context, virtualization of the network infrastructure is opening the door to a more dynamic and agile approach towards network functions as they get implemented in software. The software and IT industry in the meantime are going through their own transformation with the push towards the cloud, containerization of payloads, and functional decomposition of monolithic applications into modular services. It was just a matter of time before the two worlds converged to create a huge, combined opportunity for the telecom industry to adopt new service delivery and business models.