As edge computing deployment becomes increasingly widespread, developers are facing significant challenges in integrating APIs from multiple standards bodies and open-source frameworks—such as ETSI MEC, CAMARA, and TM Forum—each with different focuses yet playing complementary roles in building a complete telco edge cloud ecosystem. To address this, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has recently published the white paper “MEC Application Developer Guidelines for Universal Access to Service APIs Across the Industry” , aiming to clarify the relationships among these initiatives and provide clear, practical integration guidance.
Background and Motivation
While edge computing is not a new concept, its standardization and large‑scale deployment have been accelerated by ETSI’s promotion of Multi‑access Edge Computing (MEC) since 2014. With the evolution of 5G networks and the rapid digital transformation across industries, the value of edge computing is becoming ever more evident—not only does it reduce latency and improve performance by placing compute closer to users and data sources, but it also exposes network capabilities through APIs, enabling developers to build context-aware, real-time innovative applications.
However, the edge ecosystem features diverse API sources: standardized interfaces defined by bodies like ETSI MEC; developer-friendly APIs from open-source communities such as CAMARA, which simplify telco capability invocation; and TM Forum’s “Operate APIs,” which focus on operations, commercialization, and lifecycle management. In addition, industry initiatives like GSMA Open Gateway are driving operators to expose network capabilities in a unified and secure manner. Developers often need to consume APIs from multiple sources but lack clear guidance on how to effectively combine them.
Three Developer Perspectives
The white paper clearly distinguishes three types of developers who play different roles in the edge API ecosystem:
API Designers: Participate in standards development or open-source API design, ensuring interface interoperability and global consistency.
API Implementers: Typically work for operators or third-party companies, responsible for implementing APIs according to standards and deploying them into production.
API Consumers: Developers from vertical industries, software houses, or IT service providers who directly call exposed APIs to build edge applications.
Complementarity of Core Organizations and Frameworks
ETSI MEC: Provides standardized, low-latency edge service APIs, forming the technical foundation for edge capabilities.
CAMARA: Abstracts telco network complexity to deliver cross-operator, intent-based developer APIs, allowing developers to invoke network capabilities without deep telecom expertise.
TM Forum Open APIs: Focus on Operational Support Systems (OSS) and Business Support Systems (BSS), providing API productization, billing, customer management, and other commercialization and operational capabilities essential for monetizing edge services.
The white paper emphasizes that these three are not competitive but together form a complete value chain from technical capability exposure to business operations. For instance, CAMARA APIs can be built upon edge capabilities provided by ETSI MEC, while their product management and billing can be enabled through TM Forum’s Operate APIs.
Practical Resources and Guidelines for Developers
Beyond clarifying the ecosystem, the white paper highlights key support tools provided by ETSI for developers:
MEC Sandbox: An online experimentation environment where developers can register applications, explore MEC APIs, simulate various network conditions, and experience cross-MEC-platform federation scenarios.
OpenAPI Descriptions and Test Suites: All ETSI MEC service APIs come with detailed OpenAPI-compliant descriptions, accompanied by test suites in TTCN-3 and Robot Framework to facilitate integration and validation.
CAPIF (Common API Framework) Integration: The paper details how CAPIF enables unified API publishing, discovery, authentication, and secure access within MEC environments—a critical foundation for cross-domain service invocation.
Future Outlook and Call for Collaboration
A thriving edge computing ecosystem depends on a healthy developer community. The white paper concludes by calling for stronger collaboration among standards bodies, open‑source communities, and industry alliances to reduce duplication of effort and focus on unifying and improving the developer experience. ETSI MEC will continue to deepen cooperation with partners such as CAMARA, GSMA, and TM Forum to jointly advance the realization of the Telco Edge Cloud and Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) concepts, laying an open, interoperable API foundation for next‑generation communication and computing systems.
Conclusion
ETSI’s white paper serves as a valuable “navigation map” for developers operating in the complex edge ecosystem. It is not merely a technical document but an important initiative to promote industry synergy and accelerate the development of innovative edge applications. As demand explodes for private 5G, industrial IoT, AI edge inference, and more, developers who can efficiently integrate multi-source APIs will hold a decisive advantage in shaping the future digital society.
source: ETSI
