Telco APIs get more 'RESTful' – will it matter?

Instead, they advocate using Web services in a more traditional service-creation style, with vendors, developers and operators working closely to build services for the mass market (see our recent feature, Mixed Results, on the this very debate).

For instance, Microsoft is now working more closely with “sponsor” carriers as part of its Connected Services Framework project, after initially touting a more open model with developers contributed code and apps in its public “sandbox.” Microsoft is working with SingTel as the first operator in this new approach.

“We want to work on specific projects and take this thing deeper and focus on the commercialization of new services,” said Michael O’Hara, general manager of the Communications Sector at Microsoft. “The projects will all run with Microsoft working closely with developers, and they’ll all have an operator supporting and sponsoring the work and deeply involved in seeing [the services] do get commercialized.”

Another vendor that was an early pioneer of the public mashup approach was Sylantro. Much like Microsoft, it abandoned its ambition to create an open developer program and instead is focusing on working with specific carriers on creating new mass-market and enterprise-targeted services, said Sylantro CEO Marco Limena.

“We made a lot of noise around our development community, but in the end, we decided not to got that route,” Limena said, noting that just because it’s possible create a Salesforce.com/telco mashup – a typical proof of concept for open telco APIs – doesn’t mean there’s a business to be had selling them.

That said, Limena said he still firmly believes that his customers, such as BT, must continue to move from being a telco to becoming a “softco,” leveraging software – such as Sylantro’s “application feature server” -- and more rapid development styles as key drivers to their business.

The wildcard here remains pure Web players like Google, which has released Web-based APIs into its infrastructure and also launched a “development-as-a-service” platform with Google AppEngine. While Google has yet to make a major push behind telephony-style services and interfaces, it remains a strong possibility it could try to drive telco-style mashups via GoogleTalk and its GrandCentral “one-inbox” offering.

Sylantro’s Limena, however, noted that highly-transactional, low-margin telephony services hardly fit into Google’s high-margin, advertising-based business, especially since many early public telco/Web players – such as the recently shuttered Jangle – have had such a hard time making a go of it.