News & Events

The SUNRISE-6G project is pleased to highlight the ETSI OpenOP webinar, “Enabling Telco Cloud Network Federation & 6G Experimentation”, which took place online on 12 May 2026 and is now available as an on-demand tutorial resource for the wider 6G research and innovation community.

Organised under the ETSI Software Development Group Open Operator Platform (SDG OOP), the 74-minute webinar provided a comprehensive overview of OpenOP, an open-source platform designed to support telecom capability exposure, edge cloud application deployment, network federation, and emerging AI-driven telecom services.

As a project contributing to advanced experimentation and federation capabilities for future 6G infrastructures, SUNRISE-6G actively supports initiatives that promote open, interoperable, and scalable experimentation environments. The webinar was organised with the participation of the SNS JU project SUNRISE-6G (Grant Agreement No. 101139257), while the session was chaired by Vasileios Theodorou from Intracom Telecom (ICOM), a SUNRISE-6G consortium partner and Chair of ETSI SDG OpenOP.

Exploring the Open Operator Platform

During the session, participants were introduced to the OpenOP architecture and its key functional components, including:

• Open Exposure Gateway
• Service Resource Manager
• Federation Manager
• OpenOP Portal
• AI² Module

A series of live demonstrations were also showcased:

• Integration with EURECOM’s Network Exposure Function (NEF) and Core Simulator
• Retrieval of device location information through CAMARA APIs
• Quality-on-Demand (QoD) session management through the AI² interface
• Early-stage federation capabilities across operator domains

These demonstrations illustrated how OpenOP can facilitate experimentation across distributed telecom infrastructures while enabling exposure of network capabilities to developers and service providers.

Advancing AI, Data and Federation for Future Networks

One of the key discussion points was the evolution of OpenOP beyond traditional Network API exposure and cloud federation towards a broader Data and AI Federation Platform.

The webinar highlighted ongoing developments supporting:

• Data pipeline orchestration and analytics workflows
• AI and data service exposure as reusable platform components
• MLOps and DataOps lifecycle management
• Trusted sharing of data, AI models, and services across operators and testbeds
• Policy-governed and sovereign data exchange through a dataspace-oriented approach

These capabilities align closely with the vision of future AI-native 6G networks, where federated experimentation environments will play a crucial role in validating innovative services and intelligent network operations.

Growing Industry Momentum

According to information shared during the session, the OpenOP community has experienced rapid expansion, growing from 8 participating organisations in July 2025 to 28 members by May 2026. The ecosystem now includes telecom operators, research organisations, technology providers, and standardisation stakeholders working together to advance open and interoperable telecom platforms.

This growth reflects increasing industry interest in open platforms that enable interoperability, federation, AI integration, and large-scale experimentation across telecom ecosystems.

Community Engagement and Reach

The session attracted strong interest from the telecommunications and research communities, reflecting the growing momentum behind open experimentation and federation initiatives for future networks. Key participation figures include:

• 172 pre-registrations
• 74 live attendees
• 15 on-demand viewers (at the time of reporting)
• 85 unique viewers overall

These figures demonstrate the increasing interest in open-source platforms that support telecom capability exposure, cloud and network federation, AI-enabled services, and large-scale 6G experimentation. As OpenOP continues to evolve and expand its ecosystem, such engagement highlights the relevance of collaborative initiatives that bring together industry, research organisations, and open-source communities to accelerate innovation in next-generation networks.

Watch the Webinar

The full webinar recording is available online and serves as a useful tutorial for researchers, developers, operators, and stakeholders interested in telecom cloud federation, network exposure, AI-enabled orchestration, and 6G experimentation.

Webinar recording: https://www.etsi.org/events/2651-etsiopenop-webinar/

More information about ETSI OpenOP: https://openop.etsi.org/

Through its involvement in initiatives such as OpenOP, SUNRISE-6G continues to contribute to the development of open experimentation frameworks that will support the validation, integration, and deployment of next-generation 6G technologies across Europe.