KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2025 | Markus Kummerle, Deutsche Telekom

Clips
More from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2025

Markus Kümmerle

Tribe Lead MACE Engineering & Production Interface / CAMARA

Deutsche Telekom

play_circle_outline Streamlining Telco APIs for Developer Ease: CAMARA Project Simplifies Telco Complexity for Developers

play_circle_outline Enhancing Service Efficiency: The Power of APIs for Authentication, Fraud Detection, and More

play_circle_outline Community-driven feedback loop for ongoing improvements and transparency.

play_circle_outline AI integration to enhance APIs, predictions, and business opportunities.

Info
Transcript

Markus Kummerle, Deutsche Telekom

Markus Kümmerle

Tribe Lead MACE Engineering & Production Interface / CAMARA Deutsche Telekom

Markus Küemmerle of Deutsche Telekom discusses telecommunication innovations at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon EU 2025 in London. As the head of innovation and technology at Deutsche Telekom, Küemmerle explores advancements in telecommunication capabilities. During this insightful session hosted by theCUBE Research, Küemmerle elaborates on the significance of the CAMARA project within the open-source community.

Küemmerle explains that CAMARA aims to simplify the complexities faced by developers when integrating telecommunication functionalities into applicat... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What is the purpose and reason behind the creation of the CAMARA open source project organization in relation to telco capabilities and complexity? add

What is an example of how people can use APIs to improve connection quality on demand? add

What factor makes it easier to get buy-in for the CARAMA open source project with over 400 members and part of the community? add

What are some ways in which AI can benefit API development and provide business opportunities in the telecommunications industry? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Markus Kummerle, Deutsche Telekom

search

Savannah Peterson

>> Good afternoon, open source community, and welcome back to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon here in London, England. My name is Savannah Peterson, bringing you all the best stories from the show floor with the fabulous Rob Strechay. Rob, we get to talk... We're really sinking into the networking here.

Rob Strechay

>> We are. And we're getting to understand, I think the next layer down or up depending on how you look at it with APIs and how all of this comes together. And I'm really excited about this because this is something I'm going to learn about for the first time, so I'm very excited.

Savannah Peterson

>> Same, same. It's always a joy to get to learn with you, Rob. And who better to teach us than Markus Küemmerle. Thank you so much for being here with us today. I know it's a busy week.

Markus Kümmerle

>> It's a very busy week and it's a pleasure to be here.

Savannah Peterson

>> So since we're also learning, tell us about the project.

Markus Kümmerle

>> So it's all starting about telco capabilities. The telco operators have very interesting functionalities, capabilities which today's developers can use to improve their use cases, their applications, or even create new ones. And the difficulty is that telco is very complex and special. And it's different from operator to operator. You have different vendors, you have different topologies. And to simplify the world, we have started CAMARA. CAMARA is just an open source project organization to standardize simple API. So at the one side we create an abstracted layer, a very simple layer because developers want to have it easy, easy to consume, and we want to hide all the telco complexity and diversity. So that's the reason why we have started CAMARA. And we have done it in an open source project because telcos typically do it in an SDO organization and it takes three or five years until you have a paper and then the whole thing is done. So this time we are doing it by code. We are standardizing by code together with the developers that we create the best APIs.

Savannah Peterson

>> Casual.

Rob Strechay

>> Oh, sorry.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, no, go ahead.

Rob Strechay

>> And these APIs are for a lot of the things. Because, I mean we were talking with LF Networking and there's a whole lot, but these APIs are so that data exchange can happen even network to network or within the same network because like you said, many of the telcos have multiple vendors, not just one, and maybe they have some cloud native or some RAN and some other stuff that isn't the same as their core network. These APIs cover a pretty broad set of functions. How do people use those APIs?

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yep. Let me tell about an example. Quality on demand. So a developer can come to us and say, "Look, from my mobile phone to the service in the internet, please give me the best connection, please make it reliable, please give me the lowest latency you can." So that's the intent-based simple API, what we have. And then the operators now have to work on it and fill it with technical things like slices, like prioritization, like cell IDs, like all the things what are needed. And if the device moves to a Wi-Fi, we have to talk to the router. So all these technical things are done in the background and just to make it happen for the developers. And that's only one example. So quality and demand to improve the connection. We have a lot more, like APIs to simplify authentication. You all know this nice SMS with the six-digit code or if the link, the nice link, which can be used for phishing, we weren't quite rid of it. We can do it in the background without that because we use the SIM card as a second factor and that simplifies it very, very much. It's a better use experience, it's more secure. So that's also a big area. Fraud is a very, very interesting topic. We know so much about devices, about the location, about the subscribers. We can use of this capabilities to give a warning outlook that could be fraud. So next example is location. We know where the devices are. So we can send out a notification if one device comes close to another one, for example. We have security cases where you need that unfortunately. But we have also logistic cases where a company is interested to see if a device, a car comes close to a store to prepare their on-and-off loading. So a lot of examples where these APIs can be really helpful.

Savannah Peterson

>> Okay. You just said something that hit me right in the chest as someone who has had to re-log into our video platform numerous times this week. You're telling me my SIM card can be a 2FA? That's actually a thing we can do. Is that...

Rob Strechay

>> Well, for the network, right?

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah.

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yeah. That could be the second factor.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, yeah, exactly. So you won't have to put in the code ever again for all of us. Okay, sorry. That's very cool. I'm just having a personal moment. We were talking about... I don't know, when we said we were getting to sit down and learn. No, it's great. I'm loving it. I'm a little newer to the networking game than some of the folks on our team. Shout-out to Bob Laliberte. And I just think that's really cool. So I would imagine you're working with telcos all around the world. Are the challenges similar or are there some geographic specifics that you have to deal with from a compliance, sovereignty, and everything else perspective?

Markus Kümmerle

>> There are differences for sure. For example, in Japan, a tsunami API could be very useful, but in Switzerland you don't need it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah.

Rob Strechay

>> More an avalanche.

Savannah Peterson

>> At least not yet.

Markus Kümmerle

>> At least not yet.

Savannah Peterson

>> Depending on what happens with the climate.

Markus Kümmerle

>> But that makes it very interesting. We have now more than 1,270 people in CAMARA working on 60 APIs and they are coming from 430 companies all over the world. And it's so exciting to have calls with them. So in the morning to have calls with the people from China, Mongolia, from the Asian region, and then in the evening it is Uruguay, Guatemala, Mexico. So it's really nice to work with all these cultures.

Rob Strechay

>> Do you find that the community comes together because this is something that they want to solve and that's... Like the developers that you're recruiting in here from the community, are they really deep in the tech of the telco network or are they more general full-stack development that is at one of these companies? What are the types of people that make the best community members and contributors?

Savannah Peterson

>> Good question.

Rob Strechay

>> So we have three types of developers. So we have the ones who want to use the APIs. They should not need to know anything about telco. They can just use it and it should be simple and easy. So that's the one group. The second group is working within the telcos to create the APIs within one telco. And they are for sure they need all the knowledge. That's very clear. And then we have the third group, which is CAMARA. So all the people working in CAMARA, working on the APIs, they should have both because we want to follow the voice of the customer, the voice of developer. We want to create the right API, the best API. And for that, this conversation is very, very key.

Savannah Peterson

>> I love that you're looking at the developer first in that way and being so community-focused. Not surprising obviously given where we are and what you're doing. How frequently, what's the feedback loop like with your community? How often are you talking to them?

Markus Kümmerle

>> It's ongoing. So CARAMA is an open source project, and below that we have sub-projects for each of the API groups, categories.

Savannah Peterson

>> Nice.

Markus Kümmerle

>> And these people are meeting in a different sequence, and it's up to them. So if there is a real demand, it goes faster. If not, it is slower. It's open source, it's simple, driven by contribution.

Savannah Peterson

>> And transparent. Yeah, go for it.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say, do you find that that helps? Because when you're talking about telecom, there's a finite amount out there in the world. I mean, yes, there's new ones that are cloud-based that come up and things of that nature, but do you find that you can get buy-in easier because of the fact that so many, you said over 400 are members and part of the community, but getting that buy-in is not as hard because everybody's trying to solve the same problems?

Markus Kümmerle

>> I think we have achieved a mindset that telcos are not competitors, they are partners in this topic. And we only win together. And that's different to other areas. So only if we have the same API in every network in every country, it makes sense for a developer to implement it. So it only scales if you follow that plan. And so we win together. It's easy.

Savannah Peterson

>> Wow, that's actually pretty cool. So it's only scales if you agree. And that is very contrary to the traditional telco market as a whole. I always think that's one of the things that's really special and unique about open source in general is there's truly this stronger together. And we're at such an important time right now between AI, the explosion of data as a result and everything else that's going over the network and that people are using. I mean, we have to agree or else these systems would be breaking down in really funky ways all over the world. When we were talking before we went live, you gave me a little bit of the backstory on the name and I think you should share that with the audience because that's fun and I want them to learn some Greek as well.

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yeah. It was a little discussion in the early beginnings how we name the topic and we decided to do CAMARA. Camara is a Greek word and it means roof. So we want to be the roof, the umbrella for all the developer-facing telco APIs, mobile, fixed line, edge cloud, any kind of IT data APIs. It's part of CAMARA.

Savannah Peterson

>> I like that. So you can protect them from all the elements and everything else.

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yeah. Cool.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. I like it. I dig it. Well, we've been wondering about the sourcing of the names. Your favorite being RamaLama.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, RamaLama is... Anyway. But one of the things because I looked at the API set because there's over 60, like you said, and one of the ones that caught my eye was blockchain public address. How is blockchain and these types of technologies really influencing? It's on the payment side and also security because it's a public chain?

Markus Kümmerle

>> I think it's in the moment they only have this one API and it's just for the billing.

Rob Strechay

>> Okay.

Markus Kümmerle

>> So we want to carry a billing that you can buy little things and do the billing using the mobile bill. That's a simple thing.

Rob Strechay

>> Excellent.

Markus Kümmerle

>> And for that, we also use this blockchain technology at that end. The more interesting is now AI really because it's complimentary to our APIs and it helps us to build better APIs. A lot of things where we ask is prediction. So how will the network behave if I move one kilometer, five kilometers, 10 kilometers, or how will it be in one hour, in two hours? This prediction is a very asked thing and we can use AI to give a better result. Second, AI is also a business opportunity for us because we can create a large language model and provide it via APIs as model as a service. And number three, we love to have our APIs in the big, large language models as agents so that they are called from the large language models. It's a business opportunity for the telcos. So it's really complimentary and working hand in hand.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I was going to say-

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yeah, it makes a lot of sense....

Rob Strechay

>> one of those APIs that I found very interesting was the population density data. That to me makes a lot of sense because especially if you're a telco, you want to understand how many connections, devices do I have in a certain area, do I need to add coverage, do I need to move things around? But it also becomes that selling opportunity back to people who are trying to say, "I want to do geo-located marketing," and things of that nature. Do you see that outside the telcos are asking for this kind of data as well? And are they trying to influence where CAMARA goes?

Markus Kümmerle

>> For sure. We are in contact with reselling companies, with store companies because they are very interested to send location-based advertisement to the customers to pull them into the stores. And even if the customers are in the store, to direct them to the right areas and show them, "Look, personally Markus, there is something special for you." So this personalized advertisement is a very big topic where we can help. And our location type of API has some advantages to GPS. It's working indoors and it's also working if GPS is gone.

Savannah Peterson

>> So it would work in here.

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yeah, it's working here.

Savannah Peterson

>> When we're trapped inside a conference center and we have no connectivity-

Markus Kümmerle

>> For sure....

Savannah Peterson

>> which is pretty much all the time.

Rob Strechay

>> And because it's using the radio network to triangulate, right? And that's how it's working. So I think to me it's the whole thing.

Savannah Peterson

>> It's cool. It's smart.

Rob Strechay

>> The other one that got me that I really liked and for various reasons, know your customer age verification, which is very important, especially from-

Savannah Peterson

>> KYC baby, big deal.

Rob Strechay

>> Yes. It's very... Especially when you look at what's going on in the world and all of the different things that people could get into. That had to have been one of the ones that people are like, "We need this because we need to block content," or what have you, and things of that nature.

Markus Kümmerle

>> It's pushed in these days because in the US in several of the US countries, there is a new law that special services in the internet are only allowed if you have an H verification. So we need the check is the person older than 18, yes or no? And then it can access the special sites or not. But even to buy alcohol, to check if a person can go to elections if it is already 16 or 18 or 21. But even it's more important for me, for the senior people, you can get discounts when you reach 65. So this API is a very, very interesting one.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, and it creates an experience of surprise and delight for the community and folks that don't even know what's going on inside that and why it's working. This is cool. I could go a lot of different directions right now.

Markus Kümmerle

>> And I've made also personal experience with my first API. So we started in very early days with quality and demand. And we had a good relationship to BMW and we used the use case where we had to remotely control the car in a parking garage. And to make this connectivity really reliant and lowest latency, we used the quality and demand feature.

Rob Strechay

>> Wow.

Markus Kümmerle

>> And I was sitting in this car, no driver in, and what we have not known, it was in the middle of Munich in the best area, Schwabinger Tor. And in the parking garage it was full of Ferrari, Lamborghini, Bugatti. I was sitting in the backseat crossing my fingers that nothing happens. And I was so happy that all went well. So that was my personal experience. I could really feel the API with my body and the value of it.

Savannah Peterson

>> And your personal safety and the insurance for those vehicles and everything else at that moment. Yeah.

Markus Kümmerle

>> But that was my moment when I say, "Oh, there's really value in."

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I love that. I was going to ask if you were a little nervous sitting in the car when you mentioned it. I'm glad you went ahead and answered that question for us. All right. And we're big Munich fans over here, so we're familiar. I knew if I didn't say it, you were going to say it. So what do you hope to be able to say, let's call it a year from now when we're in Amsterdam at KubeCon that you can't yet say today? How do you hope it evolves?

Markus Kümmerle

>> Yeah. Well, we have the first APIs out. It's really great.

Savannah Peterson

>> Congratulations.

Markus Kümmerle

>> For me, these APIs are still too technical, too basic to telco. So if I have a wish, I would like to intensify the communication with the developers to get really what they want, what's the value, what they need. Look, for example, in this fraud area. We have now 15 APIs where you can have 15 different aspects of fraud. But I think that's not what a developer wants.

Savannah Peterson

>> No.

Markus Kümmerle

>> He has simply one question. Is it fraud, yes or no? And if yes, please give me arguments because I have to tell my customer that I deny the credit.

Savannah Peterson

>> Right.

Markus Kümmerle

>> And that's a simple thing. We have to bring it to this value and I think it's really now time to intensify this communication, to build the best APIs, and to concentrate on the value. And hopefully in one year we have it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Great. Well, we will definitely have you back on the show to talk about it, Markus. This has been way too fun not to. Thank you.

Markus Kümmerle

>> You're welcome.

Savannah Peterson

>> And thank you. I saw you geeking out properly there a second ago.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, I love this stuff. I love... Again, something I learned today and now I know where it is and I'm going to take a look.

Savannah Peterson

>> This was a cool conversation. I really can't wait to hear the updates next year. This is going to be so fun. Or maybe even in Atlanta. I hope all of you enjoyed this as much as Rob and I did sitting here with Markus. We're in London, England at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. My name's Savannah Peterson. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.