Telefonica and Nokia Collaborate on Agentic APIs

Telefonica and Nokia are working together to accelerate the use of network APIs. The companies are planning to test agentic AI approaches they believe will feed into broader moves involving the GSMA Open Gateway initiative.

A pair of AI procedures is to be tested: Agent-to-Agent Protocol (A2A) and Model Context Protocol (MCP). Telefonica stated A2A is a workflow coordination tool, and MCP is a means of standardising how AI accesses outside tools and data. The companies hope to rationalise methods of exposing and using network APIs, Telefonica explained. They anticipate that doing so would boost the development of fresh services by defining the way AI works with networks and establishing a path to provide fully agentic revenue opportunities.

Shkumbin Hamiti, head of Network Monetisation Platform at Nokia, said the companies are proving how agentic AI can meaningfully accelerate the adoption of network APIs. AI protocols are to be combined with the vendor’s Network Exposure and Network-as-Code platforms to provide secure, consistent access to network capabilities and let AI agents coordinate complex workflows.

Telefonica and Nokia have begun their work by testing a bank fraud prevention agent in a laboratory, exposing network APIs using an MCP server based on the vendor’s namesake platform to provide SIM and device swapping capabilities, among others. Nokia’s code product aggregates the outcomes to make it easier for developers of banking services to access the APIs using A2A. Telefonica wrote that the pair have “numerous other” use cases ready for future testing.