Developers and business customers of telecom service providers are interested in easy access to an increasingly broad set of services on their provider infrastructure via network APIs. Conversely, service providers see such network APIs as an emerging source of revenue.
MEF members are adding such network APIs to the LSO API suite, currently in two categories: Incident Notifications and Quality on Demand.
LSO Incident Notification
Developer and business customers using circuit and wireless connectivity services from service providers need real-time notifications of impairments, outages, and scheduled maintenance in any part of an end-to-end service through an open standard API.
The first example in the planned LSO Incident Notification API suite is the Circuit Impairment and Maintenance (CIM) API.
Circuit Impairment & Maintenance (CIM) Service and API
Enterprises buying connectivity services from their service providers need to know quickly if there is an impairment to their connectivity service or maintenance is scheduled by the service provider. The notifications from service providers to their enterprise customers regarding circuit impairment and maintenance (CIM) are often provided via emails or proprietary APIs which impose an overhead on the enterprise that has to process that information. The overhead increases with each additional connectivity service provider supplying the enterprise.
For this reason, the members of the MEF Enterprise Leadership Council (MEF ELC) proposed to the MEF membership that there be a standardized service for notifying enterprise customers of current or impending circuit impairments via a suitable standardized API.
Using the existing LSO Trouble Ticketing API (MEF 113 and MEF 124) as a starting point, an initial pre-standard notification service was drafted by MEF and an accompanying pre-standard draft API developed. This is available here for download.
A demonstration of this notification service and accompanying API has been developed by MEF member Prodapt in coordination with AT&T, Bloomberg, UPMC, and Williams-Sonoma for use by Verizon. More information on the demonstration and roadmap for the CIM service and API standardization can be requested from the group behind this initiative at cim@lists.mef.net.
LSO Quality on Demand (QoD)
The CAMARA QoD API aims to provide the customer with the ability to set the quality for a flow within an access network connection (e.g. mobile device connection or fixed access between a home gateway and the service providers gateway router) and a notification if the network cannot fulfill this request.
The LSO QoD API provides the service provider with the ability to provide pre-order information including price quotes, as well as ordering and product inventory capabilities.
The five pre-standard LSO QoD APIs can be accessed via the LSO Blending Tool.
