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Rogers Catalyst Beta: Open APIs to create more app-ortunities
November 12th, 2010 a 8:58am
For the first time, Rogers has opened up several of its application programming interfaces (APIs) to developers – exciting news whether you develop the latest bleeding-edge applications or you’re a customer that likes sending a text message.
Rogers Catalyst Beta program – which allows developers and businesses to bring new, custom mobile applications or services to market more quickly than before – is now live.
What does this mean for developers?
In short: we’ve made it much easier for you to do business with us.
Rogers Catalyst Beta includes simplified registration, click-through agreements, access to code samples, documentation, tips & tricks, a development sandbox, a larger developer community and the ability to interact with our in-house program managers.
Network-based APIs for location, messaging and billing services will be available at launch, while others such as MMS will come soon. These APIs will allow developers to build compelling new cloud-based services that leverage our network capabilities.
Revenues from mobile content and applications are projected to reach $10-billion (U.S.) by 2015, according to the North American Mobile Market Report. With millions of Rogers customers, there’s a real opportunity to help grow your business with Rogers.
To learn more and sign up for the Beta program, visit www.rogerscatalyst.com
Ok, but what does this mean for Rogers customers?
Imagine an application that allows you to use your cell-phone’s location to give a friend turn-by-turn directions to your exact spot, right now: ask your friend for directions, and then receive text directions or a map link with a plotted route between the two of you.
Or, imagine the ability for a sales manager to quickly query her mobile workforce to determine who is the closest to a given sales opportunity or service call – without the need for proprietary software.
Rogers has always been at the forefront of new technologies, whether it’s our GSM/HSPA+ network, the latest smartphones or mobile account management applications. That won’t change. Today, we’re welcoming smart, entrepreneurial developers to be a part of our extended team.
Together, we hope to create some of the world’s best experiences for you.
Are you a developer interested in working with our APIs? What are your thoughts on Rogers Catalyst Beta?
Rob Manne is a regular contributor to RedBoard.
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It definitely looks interesting and I would have liked to give it a try, however I don’t have any ideas that I could put into production. I do have a question though, what are the costs involved incase I decide to take a second look in the future?
Hi Josh,
Glad you find it interesting.
For detailed questions like that, I recommend you can head over to RogersCatalyst.com and sign up. There’s no charge to register.
Maybe you guys should be explicit about what can we could do with Catalyst that we couldn’t do with a regular iOS/Android app.
Good question, Alex.
The fundamental difference between iPhone and Android development (or any mobile OS) and Rogers Catalyst is that Rogers Calayst APIs enable cloud access to network resources.
Use of these APIs is not handset dependent and services such as Location can work across multiple Rogers or Fido mobile phones.
Does that answer your question? I encourage you to check out Rogerscatalyst.com for more info.
Are you saying that the services will only work across Rogers and Fido handsets? Or is this a TRUE cloud-based service that is device/provider agnostic.
If the former, then only use of this I see is for mobile workforces that have standardized on Rogers. Otherwise, who would want to build an application that is tied to a single provider? You can easily use other location-based API’s (Bing Maps for instance) and messaging services that won’t tie you to Rogers
Hi Matthew,
Correct, Rogers Catalyst only works across Rogers and Fido handsets – but there are millions of them. We see Rogers Catalyst as another option for developers to have in their toolkit.
In terms of application, remember the Rogers location API gives location information for devices that don’t have GPS. That’s still a significant number of people.
Also the ability to have an application’s charges appear on Rogers customers bills is not currently available elsewhere.
Rogers,
Many of us Nexus One users on the Rogers network are having problems with the Cell Tower Network based Google Location Service. The problem started around November 14th as some users reported. Is this Rogers Catalyst Beta the cause or “catalyst” to all the issues we are having? I have attached a link below where the Nexus One users on Rogers/Fido are discussing the issue. Hope to hear back from you guys soon! Thank you.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=845152