Over the last year we have been hard working to bring to life a new Developer platform called BlueVia. BlueVia embraces the entire scope of Telco 2.0 concept. The platform facilitates access to Telefonica network capabilities via new web based API’s and to Telefónica’s main asset, our customer base.

Telefonica is a company that operates in 24 countries. Our main brands are Movistar in Spain and Latin America, O2 in Europe and Vivo in Brazil. Altogether these brands represent more than 277 million customers and we are committed to opening up that audience for any third party and developer that would like to promote and distribute their products.

Also, Telefonica is deploying Application Stores in all its territories that represent a powerful path to market for developers wanting to commercialize their mobile applications.

So last week, on December 20th, we announced our first release of BlueVia. As we are still in an early stage, the BlueVia platform will be accessible by invitation as a closed beta.

We want to ensure that everything works well, all the processes are smooth and that developers are able to interact with us in a frictionless way. Anyone is free to navigate the portal and read up on our API’s, and SDK’s, but only a few hundred developers will initially be able to register on the platform to utilize the APIs and application ingestion mechanisms.

We are operating the closed beta in phases. Initially phase 1 is with a selected group of developers that we know well, some of them have even been collaborating through the entire conceptualization of BlueVia. As soon as we are confident that the platform and processes work properly, we will then move onto Phase 2 and start inviting more developers.  And, of course, ultimately move to an open beta with no invitation necessary.

This first release of BlueVia already has four Telefonica companies connected: Movistar Argentina, Movistar México, O2 UK and Movistar Spain. From Day 1 this already represents more than 80 million customers behind the platform. Not a bad start for a closed beta.

As you can see in the grid below, not all of these companies are yet exposing APIs, and only Argentina and Spain have an App Store.

You may question, is that all? The answer is no, there be more. More APIs, more countries, more Apps Stores…

The methodology in which BlueVia is supported is based on periodical releases in which we’ll expose new APIs, include new App Stores and introduce new Telefonica companies. We prefer to put the tools in your hands as soon as possible so that you can start understanding what you can do with them, experimenting with them, and starting selling and making money in the already connected countries.

In the meantime we’ll be focused in two things:

1. Listening to whatever you’ll tell us. The only way to improve ourselves is to listen to you and then utilize that to become better. So, please, take advantage of the forum, email us, tweet us, whatever, we want to know what you think.
2. We’ll keep on including new companies, APIs, Business Models and functionality, so that your BlueVia experience becomes better and better.

Well, we have still lots of things to tell you on how APIs are exposed, how you can access the Stores, which Business Models are available, etc, but you can begin to discover that on BlueVia.com.

For now we want to welcome you to BlueVia. We hope you like it. If you would like to be part of it, please request a closed beta invitation by sending an email to support@bluevia.com

Looking forward to hearing from you!

The BlueVia team