Road to Open, Intelligent 6G: O-RAN’s First 6G Workshop Toward a Structured and Collaborative 6G Journey

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O-RAN ALLIANCE (O-RAN) held its first 6G Workshop in October, 2025 in Dallas, TX, USA.

O-RAN’s first 6G workshop formally initiated the structured and collaborative approach to O-RAN’s contribution to an open, intelligent 6G, and to aligning O-RAN’s 6G readiness with 3GPP’s evolving 6G work. The workshop explored operator, vendor, and research institute perspectives on prioritized 6G technical focus areas, with the following objectives:

• Enable companies to share their vision, priorities, and perspectives.
• Explore technical focus areas as the baseline for the study items.
• Consider possible work plans and timelines aligned with 3GPP.
• Discuss key design principles and architectural approach.
• Initiate the preparation of study feature proposals.

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The workshop featured strong engagement and broad participation, with 29 presentations representing:

• 13 Operators: AT&T, China Mobile, China Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, KDDI, NTT DOCOMO, Orange, Rakuten Mobile, Reliance Jio, SK Telecom, TELUS, Verizon, and Vodafone.
• 11 Vendors: 1Finity, Aalyria Technologies, Digital Catapult, Ericsson, Keysight Technologies, NEC, Nokia, Qualcomm Technologies, Rakuten Symphony, Samsung, and VIAVI Solutions.
• 5 Research Institutes: China Information Communication Technologies Group (CICT), ETRI, Fundacion IMDEA Networks, Northeastern University, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland.

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These presentations covered the full spectrum of the 6G vision, including use cases and requirements, architectural and openness principles, the evolution of G-agnostic Service Management and Orchestration (SMO) and open fronthaul, AI/ML and cloud technologies, security and testing needs, and an indicative timeline for future steps. The contributions converged on an approach that is AI- and data-focused, cloud-based, open, and secure, building on what already exists: SMO as the main automation hub, alignment with 3GPP, and supporting unified frameworks, agent-based AI, and multi-vendor systems for a consistent 6G network. Testing and certification are also seen as essential for openness and interoperability.

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The workshop showed strong consensus on developing a unified 6G system that evolves alongside 3GPP, with clearly defined architectural splits, synchronized timelines, and close collaboration. 3GPP will guide the core system and radio advancements, while O-RAN will focus on promoting openness, intelligence, cloud-native operation, and interoperability to support widespread adoption and real-world value. A key point of agreement is that O-RAN’s 6G schedule should stay in step with 3GPP’s:

• O-RAN-R006 will cover studies, aligning with 3GPP Release 20.
• O-RAN-R007 will address normative work items, aligning with 3GPP Release 21.

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O-RAN is now working on developing specific feature and study proposals to guide its future activities. To support this, a 6G Study Ad-hoc Group has been formed to create 6G Study Feature Plans, outline initial target schedules, assign tasks to relevant Work Groups, and identify Study Feature Rapporteurs.

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The foundations for O-RAN’s 6G journey was established in April 2025 during the productive 3GPP/O-RAN joint workshop (see Link), where the respective roles and responsibilities for 6G were clarified and later-on endorsed in liaison statements by both 3GPP and O-RAN. This early alignment has enabled O-RAN to progress with clarity toward the study and future normative phases, while establishing the basis for a single, co-evolving open 6G system.