Developer Reference
CAMARA vs direct carrier APIs: what it means for buyers
CAMARA and GSMA Open Gateway standardise the shape of a telecom network API, such as SIM swap or number verification, so it looks the same regardless of which operator answers it. They do not, by themselves, guarantee that a given operator in a given market has actually implemented and switched on that API today. A vendor citing CAMARA is telling you what interface shape they use, not what coverage they currently have live.
What CAMARA and Open Gateway actually are
CAMARA is the Linux Foundation open-source project, run in collaboration with the GSMA, that defines the API specifications for network capabilities: SIM swap, number verification, device status and others. GSMA Open Gateway is the commercial initiative through which mobile operators expose those CAMARA-defined APIs to developers, either directly through their own gateway or through a hyperscaler or aggregator platform. Operators have been working on the initiative since February 2022, with the first live Open Gateway APIs deployed in Q3 2023 and eight initial APIs published, including SIM Swap and Number Verification. Checked July 2026.
Why a CAMARA claim is not the same as live coverage
Defining an API once, in CAMARA, does not switch it on everywhere at once. Each operator still has to implement its own version of that API against its own network and expose it, either through its own gateway or through an aggregator. Adoption is rolling out market by market and operator by operator rather than arriving in one global step, and coverage for a specific signal, in a specific country, on a specific operator, is the fact that actually matters to a buyer, not the existence of the standard.
This is exactly the gap Telebase is honest about in its own SIM swap API reference: the simSwap field exists in the API today, but returns a real result only once carrier registration for that market completes.
What to actually ask a vendor
"We support CAMARA" or "we're built on Open Gateway" answers a different question from "does a UK mobile number return a real SIM swap result today." Ask the second question directly, and ask for it per market if you operate across GB, DE, NL and FR, since coverage is rarely uniform across all four at once.
A signal that returns UNKNOWN honestly when an operator hasn't switched on the underlying API is a materially different integration experience from a vendor that is silent about a gap or, worse, fabricates a plausible-looking result. Ask to see the actual response shape for a market that isn't live yet.
Most vendors, including Telebase today, reach carrier networks through aggregator infrastructure rather than a direct integration with every operator. That is not a red flag by itself. It becomes one only if a vendor claims direct carrier access it doesn't have. See the carrier lookup API for how this fits into a single per-query response alongside carrier, country and number type.
Where this leaves the standard itself
CAMARA is still valuable to a buyer, just not as a coverage guarantee. Because it standardises the request and response shape across operators, a vendor built on it can extend coverage to a new operator without changing the integration a customer already has. That is a genuine advantage over a bilateral, operator-specific integration, and it is why the direction of travel across the industry, including Telebase's own roadmap, is aggregator infrastructure today, with direct carrier integrations and CAMARA-based access adopted as the standard matures.
Request early access