This newsletter is a bit delayed due to the summer break - fortunately a lot of news, and some real progress in the month I was focussed on beach, family (and a bit of work). Also quick reminder - views are mine, not that of my employer.
Network APIs: who talks — and who actually does?
I spent some time (with the help of 5.6 sol) this week plotting the main Network API players on two simple axes: how much they talk about Network APIs, and how much they actually do — real products, real integrations, real customers. The gap between the two surprised me more than I expected.
Start with the talkers. Aduna Global and Glide.ai (see update on their product in the news section) have put Network APIs at the very centre of their story. And that matters — someone has to build the category, create the language, sign the partnerships, make this thing legible to enterprises. Infobip sits in a similar spot, though with more shipped product behind the talk.
Then there's the quiet end of the chart. Twilio and Telesign barely say "Network API" out loud. But look at what's running under the hood: network-derived signals are already wired into the authentication, identity and fraud products their customers use every day. Twilio mentioned at the Open Gateway Summit that it processes 30.8 million network API transactions a day. That's not a pilot. That's a business — one that just doesn't market itself as a category.
So a low TALK score is not inactivity. On my chart, Twilio and Telesign score far higher on DO than on visibility. Sinch lands somewhere in the middle: restrained positioning, decent evidence of real capability (again based on internet research .. I do not have revenue numbers)
And then Vonage , which is the interesting one. It's loud in the category conversation and it plugs network capabilities into a developer platform enterprises already use. That combination puts it near the top-right of my chart. Worth noting: Ericsson just handed Vonage to Christophe Van de Weyer — the man who ran its API unit and, before that, Telesign. They picked a network API leader (see news). Read into that what you want. I do.
Why does the TALK/DO split matter? Because category leadership and commercial execution are genuinely different games. Loud advocacy accelerates standards, awareness, ecosystem formation — we need it. Quiet integration puts capabilities into workflows customers already have, no new category adoption required. The GSMA latest market report points the same direction: developers increasingly want one platform, not ten operator integrations (GSMA Intelligence, Jul 2026).
My working theory is the winners do both — make the opportunity understandable and make it consumable with near-zero friction. Vonage is closest to that today.
But here's what I can't figure out yet. Does loud category-building actually convert into revenue? Or do the quiet integrators eat the market while the evangelists write the standards — and the LinkedIn posts? Telecom has run that movie before.
And a question I'd genuinely like your view on: where would you put the operators on this chart? My instinct says most of them score high on TALK and painfully low on DO. Am I being unfair?
Drop a comment — especially if you'd move someone to a different quadrant.
The News
As a big believer in Network API - great to see Vonage new CEO Christophe Van de Weyer shaping his growth plan around network APIs - Rooting for a lot of success in this space. Also fun to see friend of the newsletter Rob Kurver being quoted
Light reading also covered this - in their typically glass is half empty fashion
The GSMA launched it latest state of Open Gateway (registration needed) report - good write up, nice KPIs but suspicious lack of data on dollars revenue
Now Aduna has full coverage in the US - interesting to see other players like Glide moving
I opened this with excitement but when I read it I was wondering if an AI prompt went off script … no idea what it says - anybody?