Service capabilities allow us to resolve complex scenarios in a simple, scalable and reusable way

Our colleague Javier García Calzada, from the Capacities of Services management department at Telefónica España, talks to us about the importance of Capacities in the development of services for any type and segment of customer.

Javier García Calzada Follow

Capacidades de Servicios at Telefónica España

28/04/2025

Reading time: 6 min

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Tell us a little about yourself. What does your job at Telefónica involve?

I joined Telefónica as an intern in 2013 and after a year I became part of the Telefónica Spain workforce in the Service Capabilities department. Capabilities are elements that offer services transversal functionalities for any type and segment of customer.

Always service-oriented, they are especially important in the development of services, both Residential and Corporate, because the same functionality offered by a capability is reused for different services, thus considerably reducing the economic cost and the time-to-market of development.

We enter Service Development projects at the Design phase and help provide the best possible solution.

Within the Capabilities plan we offer different functionalities: Notification, Location, User Profiling, Presence, API Exposure, Messaging…

Could you give us an example of Capabilities?

To give an example of the Capabilities I work with on a daily basis:

DataGrid. This is a capability that offers services real-time access to user profile information that may be distributed across different repositories. DataGrid integrates with systems and other network repositories, so that it serves information to services through a simple API in a unified way, without the need for services to integrate with each of the repositories. By providing DataGrid numbers, it is integrated with more than 50 services and receives around 250 million queries daily.
SCP-Presencia. This is a capability that is integrated with the different network cores to detect IMEI and roaming changes or to determine the status of a mobile line (busy, free or switched off), and makes them available to services through a simple API.
TOM. This is a capability that is responsible for notifying services through subscriptions where the notification can be filtered and enriched with data obtained from DataGrid. Regardless of the network technology to which the mobile user is connected (3G, 4G, or 5G), it can notify IMEI changes, country changes, … as well as changes in the user profile that occur in DataGrid.
GAS (Advanced Session Manager). This is a recently created Capacity that will soon be in production. It came about recently because we saw the need to offer services session control by time. It will soon be a reality.

Let’s say that the Capabilities abstract the services from the complexity of integration with multiple elements, whether they are Network or Systems, to offer transversal functionalities through simple and friendly APIs.

Can you give me some examples of services for which these Capabilities are important?

To highlight some services that may be relevant at the moment:

In VoLTE and 5GSA, SCP-Presence, DataGrid and TOM are fundamental pieces in the growth of these services since when a user connects to our network the SCP-Presence detects the terminal they are using and communicates it to TOM, which consults the user and terminal information in DataGrid, so that if the appropriate conditions are met, that they have a compatible terminal among others, it triggers the self-provisioning of the service in the form of a notification to the Systems to register the user in VoLTE and/or 5GSA. In this way, we are able to provide customers with the best services without the need to interact with them. This is a clear example showing that each Capacity is a specialised piece that performs very specific functions, so that the combination of these pieces allows us to solve complex scenarios in a simple, scalable and reusable way

In Open Gateway, SCP-Presencia, TOM, DataGrid and GAS are also important. To mention some of the APIs in which we participate:

SIM Swap: is an API used mainly for fraud prevention, whereby information relating to the last card duplicate made by a user is made available to the customer. In the case of users with a Multisim service, the card could have been duplicated with any of the group’s lines. DataGrid plays a fundamental role because it is responsible for applying the logic necessary to determine which is the group line with the most recent card duplicate, which is the information that the customer needs.
Quality On Demand. This is an API for displaying control of users’ mobile connectivity. This API was the reason why we created GAS, as it was necessary to manage the time associated with mobile connectivity control.
Device Roaming Status. This is an API that provides information relating to a user’s roaming. SCP-Presence, TOM and DataGrid are relevant. SCP-Presence integrates with the Network Core to detect changes of country, TOM classifies the information obtained from the Network Core and DataGrid offers it through a simple API for consultation.
Number Verification: This is an API to identify a mobile user from the data connection of their phone without the need to interact with them. It is useful for providing clients with reliable, secure and fast authentication mechanisms. DataGrid receives a request with the user’s browsing data and applies the necessary logic to obtain the phone number from the network.

Of course, for all the APIs, above the Capacities, there is a layer where user consent is managed and data protection is guaranteed, but this is outside our scope.

What are the key aspects of the Capacities?

One of the most important aspects in the design of the Capacities is their orientation towards service provision. High transaction rates per second must be supported, guaranteeing minimum latencies to ensure the best possible user experience.

Another important aspect is the selection of the most appropriate technology on the market.

Finally, I would say that the certification of the Capacities that we carry out in pre-production environments to ensure the quality of the developments that we take to production is also a fundamental part.

What are the main challenges you face in designing the Capacities?

Firstly, I would say that, in addition to designing what the services demand, we usually try to anticipate the needs of the services in order to implement new functionalities that may be useful, so that when the service demands it, we already have it practically ready to be used. In this way, we reduce the time-to-market even further.

I would also highlight the great technological challenge we are currently facing. We are evolving all these Capabilities into containerised environments to take advantage of all the benefits that this technology offers us.

Could you highlight any project that you are particularly proud of?

I have participated in numerous projects in which our Capabilities have played a fundamental role from a technological point of view, but, without a doubt, I would choose one that has little to do with technology. In 2022 we decided to change the name of one of our Capabilities.

MAGT was renamed TOM. The reason for this is to pay tribute to Tomás Gómez Martín, head of the Service Capabilities Technology area for 12 years, who passed away in 2021. The void he left among all of us who knew him was so great that we decided to give back a small part of everything he gave us in the form of a tribute, to recognise his professional career and keep his memory alive.