For femtocell APIs to be effective, mobile operators must learn how to engage developers outside their own walls.

Application programming interfaces in femtocells may have a lot of potential, but who is going to exploit it? Mobile operators have historically been used to ‘walled garden’ models, in which applications are developed in-house to retain carrier control over revenues. But the key lesson learned from this is that they must break down those walls.

The most successful projects are open. Operators are starting to realize this, due in large part to the huge success of Apple’s iOS, and Google’s Android, both of which are open models that let independent developers craft their own applications. However, many carriers may need help engaging that broader community.

Making developers aware of the opportunities associated with femtocell APIs is the first hurdle. Tied to that is an understanding of the business model, and how those developers gain access to these APIs, and pay for them.

Moving outside the walled garden doesn’t necessarily mean that API customers can’t be strategic. Business partners with which the mobile operator has an existing relationship are likely to consume these services. Examples could be home security companies: they might use the information from femtocell APIs to alert one person via SMS message when another person in the family arrives home, for example. One can see similar potential business partners in areas such as home healthcare, perhaps.

For this to work, developers must be given easy access to APIs. Alcatel-Lucent makes the Open API Platform available to developers. Primarily an API management tool, it enables an operator or an enterprise to expose APIs in a secure, controlled manner, using software keys provided to authorized developers. They can provide those APIs to professional partners to set up a developer portal, including blogs and forums for exchanging information.

Such tools are fundamental to the creation of developer communities. The other critical part of the process is understanding the value chain and using it to promote customer engagement. One option for carriers interested in making femtocell APIs available is to follow the ‘B2B2C’ model. The enterprise partners they work with consume the APIs, incorporate them into their own services, and then expose those to consumers. This effectively turns the business partners into channel partners that make the raw femtocell data relevant to a consumer audience.

What might this look like in practice? A coffee shop could create a branded app that would give away a free coffee to its customers on every fifth visit. Perhaps it could prompt staff to get the customer’s customary latte going when she walks in the door and joins the line-up.

Software companies the world over understand the relevance of developers to their success. Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is on the record preaching this point, and Google’s I/O developer conference regularly foregrounds mobile application development. Mobile operators, used to closed communities, face a significant amount of cultural rewiring to embrace this idea, but it is crucial to making femtocell APIs relevant. Let’s hope that they’re up to the challenge.

This article was originally published over at Alcatel-Lucent’s Wilson Street blog. A site dedicated to evangelizing femtocell technology.