New Linux Foundation white paper: How to integrate AI applications with telecom networks using standardized CAMARA APIs and the Model Context Protocol (MCP)
The Linux Foundation’s CAMARA project [1.] released a significant white paper, “In Concert: Bridging AI Systems & Network Infrastructure through MCP: How to Build Network-Aware Intelligent Applications.” The open source software organization says, “Telco network capabilities exposed through APIs provide a large benefit for customers. By simplifying telco network complexity with APIs and making the APIs available across telco networks and countries, CAMARA enables easy and seamless access.”
Note 1. CAMARA is an open source project within the Linux Foundation to define, develop and test the APIs. CAMARA works in close collaboration with the GSMA Operator Platform Group to align API requirements and publish API definitions. Harmonization of APIs is achieved through fast and agile created working code with developer-friendly documentation. API definitions and reference implementations are free to use (Apache2.0 license).
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The white paper outlines how the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and CAMARA’s network APIs can provide AI systems with real-time network intelligence, enabling the development of more efficient and network-aware applications. This is seen as a critical step toward future autonomous networks that can manage and fix their own data discrepancies.
CAMARA facilitates the development of operator-agnostic network APIs, adhering to a “write once” paradigm to mitigate fragmentation and provide uniform access to essential network capabilities, including Quality on Demand (QoD), Device Location, Edge Discovery, and fraud prevention signals. The new technical paper details an architecture where an MCP server functions as an abstraction layer, translating CAMARA APIs into MCP-compliant “tools” that AI applications can seamlessly discover and invoke. This integration bridges the historical operational gap between AI systems and the underlying communication networks that power modern digital services. By leveraging MCP integration, AI agents can dynamically access the latest API capabilities upon release, circumventing the need for continuous code refactoring and ensuring immediate utilization of emerging network functionalities without implementation bottlenecks.
“AI agents increasingly shape the digital experiences people rely on every day, yet they operate disconnected from network capabilities – intelligence, control, and real-time source of truth,” said Herbert Damker, CAMARA TSC Chair and Lead Architect, Infrastructure Cloud at Deutsche Telekom. “CAMARA and MCP bring AI and network infrastructure into concert, securely and consistently across operators.”
The paper includes practical example scenarios for “network-aware” intelligent applications/agents, including:
- Intelligent video streaming with AI-powered quality optimization
- Banking fraud prevention using network-verified security context
- Local/edge-optimized AI deployment informed by network and edge resource conditions
In addition to the architecture and use cases, the paper outlines CAMARA’s objectives for supporting MCP, which include covering areas such as security guidelines; standardized MCP tooling for CAMARA APIs; and quality requirements and success factors needed for production-grade implementations. The white paper is available for download on the CAMARA website.
Collaboration with the Agentic AI Foundation
The release of this work aligns with a major ecosystem milestone: MCP now lives under the Linux Foundation’s newly formed Agentic AI Foundation (AAIF), a sister initiative that provides neutral, open governance for key agentic AI building blocks. The Linux Foundation announced AAIF on December 9, 2025, with founding project contributions including Anthropic’s MCP, Block’s goose, and OpenAI’s AGENTS.md. AAIF’s launch emphasizes MCP’s role as a broadly adopted standard for connecting AI models to tools, data, and applications, with more than 10,000 published MCP servers cited by the Linux Foundation and Anthropic.
“With MCP now under the Linux Foundation’s Agentic AI Foundation, developers can invest with confidence in an open, vendor-neutral standard,” said Arpit Joshipura, general manager, Networking, Edge and IoT at the Linux Foundation. “CAMARA’s work demonstrates how MCP can unlock powerful new classes of network-aware AI applications.”
“The Agentic AI Foundation calls for trustworthy infrastructure. CAMARA answers that call. As AI shifts from conversation to orchestration, agentic workflows demand synchronization with reality,” said Nick Venezia, CEO and Founder, Centillion.AI, CAMARA End User Council Representative to the TSC. “We provide the contextual lens that allows AI to verify rather than infer, moving from guessing to knowing.“
References:
https://camaraproject.org/news/
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