Anthony Bartolo, the newly appointed CEO of API group Aduna (pictured, second left), outlined the company’s vision of bringing multiple entities together to drive the ecosystem, as he pledged to fill a canvas that will effectively enable global innovation at scale.
Speaking at Ericsson’s pre MWC25 Barcelona summit in one of his first public appearances in the role, Bartolo explained Aduna represents a way of connecting an “ecosystem of builders and makers”, with the mobile operators involved essentially serving as the former.
“They’ve effectively, in this industry, invested some trillion dollars plus in building infrastructure around the world,” explained Bartolo. “And those investments have in turn become catalysts for a whole bunch of other builders and makers to innovate. That is going to continue and this venture will further centralise the complexity associated with it.”
At the event, Ericsson also announced Japanese operator KDDI would be joining as Aduna’s latest equity partner, adding to a deal announced this week on the distribution side with software provider Sinch.
Bartolo was joined by a trio of operator partners to discuss the merits of network APIs, including KDDI’s chief architect, and GM of its technology and planning division Atsushi Matsugatani (pictured, far right)
Matsugatani explained KDDI’s participation in Aduna would help “cultivate new business opportunities”, by reaching new customers, learning more about existing customers and expanding its business with hyperscale partners including Google Cloud.
He also revealed he expects more Japanese companies to join the initiative.
Get out of the industry
Also on the panel, US heavyweights AT&T and T-Mobile US spoke about the opportunity in network APIs and how a platform like Aduna had invigorated the industry.
Yigal Elbaz, SVP of Technology and Network services, and CTO at AT&T (pictured, centre) called for a mindset change to focus on what is required outside the industry rather than within.
“We typically like to ask ourselves, telco people, what we think is going to happen and what network capabilities people will use. That’s not the way to do this. You actually need to ask the customers, aggregators, platforms and developers, and actually get out of our industry to other industries to understand what they want, how they want to leverage our network.”
Emil Liedtke, senior director of product partnerships and growth at T-Mobile (pictured, second right) added it was hard not to get excited about APIs, stating it is not “only an opportunity, but an obligation for us to co-create”.