This deep dive expands on the Loop Asia conversation with Alex Szomora, GSMA's Senior Go-To-Market Project Manager for Open Gateway.

There's a moment in Alex Szomora's interview that gets one sentence and deserves far more attention: many mobile operators already had their own version of anti-fraud and authentication capability before Open Gateway existed. So when GSMA asks them to adopt a standardized, cross-carrier version of the same thing, the operator isn't being offered a new product. It's being asked to potentially cannibalize one it already sells.

That's not telecom-specific — it's what any company faces when an industry coalition, a standards body, or a dominant platform commoditizes what used to be your differentiator. Szomora's answer generalizes well beyond telecom.

Three moves when your product gets standardized out from under you

The first move is simple avoidance: if a standardized API would directly compete with something you already sell, pick a different one from the catalogue that still delivers value without cannibalizing your own product. A legitimate, if temporary, hedge.

The second is harder: build something genuinely better, then either charge a premium for the upgrade or end-of-life the old one. Szomora was clear that inertia — inside the organisation and among customers alike — resists change even when the new thing is better. Nobody migrates for free.

The third is the one most companies skip: demand generation. Szomora's most pointed comment was about scale — for a large operator, "a mere couple of million dollars of revenue wouldn't move the needle." Assuming a great API sells itself — "build it and they will come" — doesn't hold at that scale. GSMA's response: build its own demand-side generation support instead of waiting for interest to arrive. If the standard-setter doesn't trust supply-side excellence alone, that's a signal: distribution deserves as much investment as the product.

The federation model as a governance lesson

Underneath the commercial question sits a structural one: GSMA runs Open Gateway on a contribution model. There were no templates for federation agreements at the start, so whichever telco or country worked out the best approach — legally, commercially, technically — shares it with the community. Pricing and commercial terms stay strictly bilateral, operator-to-operator, to avoid antitrust exposure; GSMA facilitates the technical federation and stays out of the money conversation.

That split — shared technical standard, strictly separated commercial negotiation — is a deliberate governance choice, and it's why competing carriers came to the table. Szomora frames Open Gateway as GSMA's third major achievement, after GSM itself and international roaming — both requiring the same discipline: shared infrastructure where it creates value, strict separation where it would otherwise look like collusion.

Why this matters outside telecom

Any growth-stage company inside a standardization wave — open banking, embedded finance rails, AI interoperability protocols — faces the same set of decisions: adopt, differentiate, or fight the standard; how to generate demand for a capability that's no longer exclusive; how to structure participation without triggering regulatory exposure. These are strategic decisions, made under time pressure, by an executive who can't wait to see how the standard shakes out.

That's the exact playbook Blue Connector's telecom clients are living through right now: deciding which standards to join, how to price around them, and how to keep a seat at the table while the rules are still being written.