The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) released its first Open Operator Platform (OpenOP), an open-source initiative to enable telecom and developer collaboration on next-generation network services and 6G experimentation.

The platform was designed to allow network operators, vendors, research institutions, and software developers to federate networks and testbeds. It is said to help expose telecom capabilities through developer-focused APIs based on the open-source Camara project framework hosted by the Linux Foundation.

OpenOP Release 1 is an early-stage milestone that introduces a modular architecture forming the foundation of the platform and is primarily intended for experimentation, integration testing, and community feedback. Also included are early federation capabilities to coordinate services across multiple operators, an API gateway to expose network and edge cloud functions, and tools to manage the life cycle of applications deployed in edge environments.

Other components include an AI-driven interface that enables users to interact with platform functions via natural language, and a web-based portal for managing applications and APIs through a graphical interface.

ETSI described the release as a “working foundation” for the OpenOP vision, with further updates expected as the community contributes to expanding functionality and improving stability.

Developers using Release 1 can deploy the platform locally, test application onboarding workflows, and experiment with network capabilities such as quality-on-demand (QoD) sessions. The release is also promised to support early federation scenarios between partner networks, where prerequisites are in place.

The launch has drawn support from several major telecom companies, including BT Group, Orange Romania, OTE, and Altice Portugal. The initiative builds on work from the EU-backed SNS-JU program and its SUNRISE-6G project, to link European 6G research efforts to industry standardization.

What ETSI did earlier

ETSI recently participated in a venture with several telecom industry bodies to drive the momentum of self-healing networks.

The AI Telco Troubleshooting Challenge, announced in November last year, is a joint venture between ETSI, trade groups GSMA and TM Forum, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the telecoms AI-focused IEEE GenAINet.

As part of the venture, the organizations called on operators, AI researchers, and startups to submit advanced large language models (LLMs) that can undertake root-cause analysis on telecom network faults.

AI model submissions are urged in three categories, including generalization to new faults, which will assess the best-performing LLMs for root-cause analysis purposes. Other categories covered small AI models at the edge and explainable AI on models that can explain their reasoning with clarity.