Advancing open RAN innovation through community-driven software, automation, and real-world demonstrations
The O-RAN ALLIANCE and O-RAN Software Community (SC) gathered in Dallas from October 27 to 31, 2025 for a productive Face-to-Face meeting, hosted by the O-RAN ALLIANCE, that brought together operators, vendors, researchers, and developers from across the global O-RAN ecosystem. The sessions showcased practical demonstrations, technical progress, and collaborative milestones that are shaping the future of intelligent, cloud-native, and interoperable RAN.
This recap highlights the demos, the technologies behind them, and how they support the O-RAN vision.
A Week of Collaboration Focused on the Future of Open RAN
The O-RAN ALLIANCE holds regular in-person meetings to advance specifications and support continuous alignment across member companies. The Dallas meeting showed how specification work and open source development naturally support one another.
Throughout the week, contributors shared progress on RAN intelligence, cloud platforms, automation frameworks, testing, CI and CD, and AI and ML pipelines. These efforts are essential for operators and vendors who need open, well-integrated, and production-ready implementations that map directly to O-RAN architecture.
The demo sessions anchored the week and provided an opportunity for the community to show end-to-end implementations that run on open platforms and follow O-RAN interfaces.
Near-RT RIC in Action
The Near-RT RIC team demonstrated how an intelligent RAN controller can manage workloads, react to network conditions, and support real-time decision-making. The session gave operators and vendors a practical look at how rApps and xApps can integrate through O-RAN interfaces to deliver intelligent control of the RAN.
Find Description and Slides here
End-to-End Automation with VNF Deployment, Monitoring, and Healing
(Four-part demo series with playlist)
This was one of the most significant demonstrations of the week. The O-RAN SC INF and SMO-related projects showed how an end-to-end closed-loop automation framework can deploy VNFs, monitor faults and performance, and trigger healing operations when needed.
This automation is built on O-RAN interfaces, ETSI NFV profiles, and a stack of open source components, including Tacker, StarlingX, Devtron, and Prometheus. It demonstrates how operators can achieve reliable, cloud-native RAN operations using open tools and specifications.
The demo was delivered in four scenarios:
- Deploying the DMS (Tacker) on StarlingX
- Deploying the VNF
- Monitoring FM and PM using O2dms
- Auto-healing triggered by alarms
Each scenario builds on the previous one to show full life-cycle management across SMO, VNFM, and O-Cloud domains. This is an important step for operators who want automated, resilient RAN operations built on open standards and software.
Modernizing CI and CD with GitHub
The CI and CD modernization session showed how the community is simplifying and consolidating development workflows. By moving build, test, deployment, and publishing pipelines from a mix of Gerrit, Jenkins, and GitHub into GitHub Actions, the community reduces infrastructure needs and lowers maintenance overhead.
This improves developer productivity and helps member companies deliver features faster with fewer moving parts.
OKD as an O-Cloud Platform
Red Hat presented a strong update on OKD as a reference O-Cloud platform. Their work in the INF project has expanded from single-node clusters to multi-node architectures with integrated observability, compliance testing, O2 IMS and DMS services, and automated O-Cloud Manager deployments.
For operators and integrators, this provides a clear and community-supported option for cloud-native RAN infrastructure built entirely on open source technologies.
This demo included three videos:
- O-Cloud Manager Cluster Deployment
- Node Cluster Deployment
- Validation
These videos walk through how OKD provisions sites, manages clusters, and enforces policies across the deployment pipeline.
Composable AI and ML Pipelines for AIMLFW
The AIMLFW team demonstrated how modular pipeline components can be assembled dynamically to train and manage AI and ML workloads relevant to open RAN. This approach allows pipeline builders to combine modular components for data ingestion, model training, evaluation, and optimization.
This work supports the broader goal of bringing intelligent automation into real-world RAN environments and aligns with growing operator interest in AI-supported network optimization.
Machine Readable Format Testing for Open Fronthaul
The TIFG team demonstrated how the Machine Readable Format can be used to verify O-RU behavior, including operational information configuration and M-Plane interactions. The demo showcased how automated validation can accelerate O-RU development and ensure consistent compliance across vendors.
Community Discussions and Alignment
OSFG meetings took place throughout the week and focused on cross-project planning, developer needs, coordination across working groups, and alignment with O-RAN ALLIANCE priorities. These conversations ensure that software development supports specification evolution, operator requirements, and testing initiatives across regions.
Looking Ahead
The demos and sessions from Dallas highlighted the strong collaboration between the O-RAN ALLIANCE and the O-RAN Software Community. Together, the groups are building the tools, frameworks, and reference implementations needed for open RAN deployments that are intelligent, automated, interoperable, and ready for real-world use.
From cloud-native O-Cloud platforms to automated VNF life-cycle management, AI and ML pipelines, and intelligent RAN control, the community continues to push forward the vision of open and disaggregated wireless networks.
Learn More and Explore the M Release
The M Release is under active development and brings new work across SMO, Non Real Time RIC, Near Real Time RIC, OAM, AIMLFW, INF, and more.
Read about the goals, current work, and upcoming milestones for the M Release on the community wiki.