RAW FILE

UN - ITU
SG15 OPENING PLENARY
JUNE 29, 2026
8:00 AM CT

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MODERATOR:  Okay. Welcome back to Canada. I'm honoured to be the Chair, to your Chair, and for this third meeting of Study Group 15 of the 2025‑2028 Study Period. I'm Glenn Parsons. In holding this on Canadian holidays, I'm proud to be hosting this Study Group meeting in Canada for the second time as we celebrate the national day this week. It is not on the first day this time, but it is on Wednesday. Canada Day will be July 1st. Just an interesting point. Canada will not be playing on ‑‑ this is in the ‑‑ Canada has made it to the round of 16 for those of you who were paying attention yesterday. We will not be ‑‑ we will be taking Canada Day off as the Canadian team and very interesting, we'll be playing on July 4th, which is the American holiday and the U.S. team will be playing on Jill 1st. So, it is an interesting flip, if you will; right? So, in any case, welcome everyone here to Canada. There are ‑‑ there are some Canadian pins that we have for you at the registration desk. If you didn't get one already. I know it was a big line up there to get everyone organised here today. We have some Canada pins for everyone to add at their registration desk. Hopefully there's enough, because we're expecting over 300 participants in person here. Nearly 500 participants registered for this meeting. With a large increase in the number of VISA requests for this particular meeting. Thanks to our host, we were ‑‑ with the government of Canada, we were able to invite pretty much everyone who requested a VISA to join us. So, you know, I would like to thank everyone join us. For today's opening plenary. You know, remote participation is available. We have remote broadcast. It is the in‑person meetings that, you know, I think, make a difference. I invite everyone to take advantage of that during the two weeks here in Montreal as we, you know, bring forward our contributions and have those discussions with colleagues to move forward the work of Study Group 15. These sort of discussions are, you know, not really possible, in my opinion, if we're just, you know, on My Meetings or WebEx or Zoom‑type discussion. It is really where you get energy and innovation when we're able to meet and discuss in person. Our Management Team is working diligently to ensure that we continue to be able to meet in person. I'll talk a little bit about that later as we ‑‑ as we go on in the agenda here today. Before we go further, I would like to invite Mr. When Cuwan to join us here today. Wen please?
SPEAKER:  Can you hear me? Glenn? Good morning, Chair, Director, and delegates. (Speaking a language the captioner does not understand) on behalf of the innovation, science, and economic development Canada, it is my pleasure to warmly welcome you to Montreal for the meeting of Study Group 15. We are honoured to host such a distinguished group dedicated to advancing global standards in telecommunications and ICTs. (Speaking a language the captioner does not understand)
Optical networks are evolving rapidly from highly ‑‑ from high‑capacity transport systems to intelligent, programmable, infrastructures that meet the demands of AI, NextGen wireless innings, and modern data centers. With guidance from forward‑looking frameworks such as IM2030 and continued advances in technologies, future of infrastructure will be designed to sense, adapt, and optimise performance at terabyte scale. The library information, the IEEE and study leaders is accelerating quantum and standards for the future in interoperability, especially for AI and 6G. We are pleased to welcome you back to Montreal after the success of our previous meeting here in 2024. Your ongoing engagement reflects the productive collaboration and meaningful discussions from the last time and we look forward to building on momentum ‑‑ on that momentum. We have a busy agenda. As Glenn illuded to, we have 500 registered participants from 40 countries, nearly 450 contributions, and three workshops on the margins of the meeting. This event is made possible thanks to the generous sponsorship and support of the IEEE and leading organisations in the telecommunications industry. Their commitment highlights the importance of strong partnerships in the government, industry, and standard development bodies as we continue to work toward the future of connectivity and sustainable, digital transformation.
Montreal's fiber culture and leadership in technology provide the perfect setting for the important work. We hope you enjoy the professional exchange, the unique legal experiences the city has to offer, and the festivities of Canada Day on Wednesday.
(Speaking a language the captioner does not understand)
Thank you all for your commitment and participation. I wish you a productive and successful meeting. Back to you, Chair.
CHAIR: Thank you very much, Wen, for your greeting. I would like to thank the Government of Canada for hosting the meeting in Canada again. I would like to recognise the sponsors from industry that made it possible, IEE, the Land Man Sanders Committee is the platinum sponsor for the meeting. In addition to that, we have Ericsson and Sienna who are providing sponsor ‑‑ I think we call them gold sponsors and Corning Luxe in Montreal also sponsoring us to make it possible to have the meeting here in Montreal. Now this time it is going to be a little bit different. We're going to be here in the Sheriton Hotel today. Because of the square-dancing competition, we have to move to McGill University tomorrow. More about that later. Right now, what I would like to do is to introduce and invite our director, who is the Director of the IT Telecommunications Standard Communications Bureau to provide the welcoming remarks.
(Applause) 
SPEAKER:  Good morning, everyone. Let me start by thanking our Chair, Glenn Parsons. And Canada's Wen for SG15 in Montreal for the second time in just two years. Thank you very much. We highly appreciate your support. SG15 is a world-renowned center of excellence. Your work is foundational to global progress. And our economies and ambitions grow. So that our reliance on standards SG15. We are working on the technology to drive education and so much more. This is made possible by the networks that you have built. Because you keep going forward. Thank you for your commitment. It is well received. In your work programme, we see towards the greater determining. We see the innovation IO 2030 vision a reality. The workshop on AI this morning and later with the incentive to look at the goals for the future. We were also continuing our running series of workshops with ITU‑AO2, our side of productive collaboration. I also thank our ‑‑ thank you once again for how we act as ambassadors for your work and the conferences like OFC and ACP. AC15 with the engagement and it wants to deliver the party of ITU far and wide. I'm going to note that with our new SG15 Regional Group for Africa, we are already missing some engagement from our frequents. I have no doubt at this group we're also providing support to send us implementation. This meeting we will consider 431 contributions and things to complete over 30 senders. I wish you every success. To our Chair, Glenn Parsons, and the Management Team, and every SG15 expert, I thank you very much for your investment in ITU and outstanding services you provide to innovators worldwide. I'm looking forward to learning more about the thinking and priorities and how I could best support you. Thank you.
(Applause)
CHAIR: Thank you very much. I would like to thank you for recognising the innovation here in Study Group 15. I've been expanding on this. A couple of our work items, you know, from high‑speed pond to multicore and hollow core fiber, and all of these continue to demonstrate the value that we're providing to the global optical ecosystem. I would to especially express our appreciation to TSB for its ongoing support which has enabled us to expand our promotional activities in 2026. We have that with our ITU booth that we've been promoting at OFC. We're going to have another ITU booth coming up in the fall at the conference in Europe and also this year also at ACP in China in November. With the three big conferences this year, I would appreciate the support of TSB as we continue our outreach to the broader industry and show the value of ITU and ITU‑T and Study Group 15 and we appreciate the continued support as we look to, you know, increase our membership and share the value. More about those later. We'll continue the discussions. We're showing the agenda here. This is in 211. We'll go through this shortly. What I wanted to note is that the meeting group schedule on my meetings. We're being broadcast today. The meeting is available in ‑‑ on broadcast as well. There's captioning available for this meeting. Remote access to the plenaries are in broadcast code on my meetings. They will be available in interactive mode for the rapporteur group meetings when we get those started here later today. We have the vice chair from Canada. The next we have the Vice Chair from the Republic of Korea. Next to him we have the Vice Chair representing India. We have the director in front of me. We have the Vice Chair of the United States. We are quite honoured to have as well this time, the deputy director who is sitting right next to me here today. Thank you to all. Thank you to the rapporteurs and work party editors as well. We would have a long plenary if I introduced all of you. If you don't mind, we'll continue with our agenda here. So, Hiroshi, this is TD211. If we scroll down here, we opened the meeting. We've had our opening remarks. The next thing is to approve this agenda. Let me just summarise what we're going to discuss. The first thing is the ‑‑ of course, after the approval of the agenda is I'm going to discuss the organisation of Study Group 15 and then we'll work and talk about some of the working methods, topics which is the ‑‑ so outcomes from TSAG of interest and the guidance of the work and Study Group 15. Then we'll look at feedback and status of reports. We see that in item six. Maybe scroll up a little bit please, Hiroshi. We'll look at interim meetings and liaison and approach and coordination group output, the status of documents, and management matters of interest to the plenary which is the future meetings, which I had noted before I'll let you know about our progress there. Then we'll talk about the objectives for the meeting as well as what we're looking to approve this time. Our time plan and we'll have a look at that. We'll look at that and trying to highlight where we're doing to be meeting here this week and the same thing with the meeting logistics, and some guidance there. Finally, the document of allocation. Miscellaneous points to note.
Are there any comments on the agenda, ladies and gentlemen? Okay. We'll take that as agreed. So, let's start then scroll back up, Hiroshi. We've approved the agenda. Now let's look at organisation of Study Group 15. Oh, I just ‑‑ if you don't mind. I'm not even sharing here, unfortunately. I wanted to share a photo. I'm not even in the meeting. All right. Okay. I'll share it without the photo. Anyway. What I wanted to ‑‑ what I wanted to announce here is that I would like to acknowledge the leadership of Mr. Paul Dulan from Wawei, who was the share for the last study period and first two of this study period. He has guided the team with expertise and Irish wit. Paul resigned at beginning of the month due to change personal and family circumstances. I hope you'll join me and wishing hitch and his family all the best. I will be providing him with dedication for Working Group two during the study period. The picture that I wanted to show was the last time I presented him the certificate here, two years ago for the last study period. In any case, perhaps I'll put that photo up later at break or something. As a result of that, we've decided in the leadership team to make a couple of changes in the leadership of Study Group 15. So, this is in TD233 of plenary. If you'll scroll down, a little bit here. The structure remains the same. What we've done is that now we ‑‑ I would like to appoint Mr. Bhaunik to be the Chair and invite Mr. Cavaliere to be the Vice Chair. He is in back at kids’ table. Now he gets to come to the grown-up table. And assist in continuing to lead Working Party 2. Since Fabio was the rapporteur of Q6, I've asked Mr. Shen to be the rapporteur now of Question 6 as he was previously the associate rapporteur. There's a lot of work in Question 6. We need to have an appropriate rapporteur. We're discussing that with several candidates. We'll let you know that appointment at the end of the plenary. So, that's the changes and the updates to the leadership for Study Group 15 as a result of the departure of Mr. Paul. Okay. Thank you. Next on the agenda, is it the working methods?
Next is working methods. If we could go to Agenda Item ‑‑ yes. This is the guidance. Not guidance, the previous one. The one on the TSAG report. The highlights of TSAG relevant to Study Group 15. Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to provide you with some background on what is happening at the ‑‑ at TSAG which is the advisory group, of course, and telecom standardisation. The WTSA meeting every four years. TSAG provides guidance in between structure and working methods and such. TSAG is organised as I mentioned before and into two Working Parties, mostly focused in one Working Party on working methods and engagement, Strategic Planning, and the other Working Party on work programme and restructuring and such. You can see who are the various leaders here. But if you go up and I just want to highlight some of the relevant topics that are worth noting. The first one is that the ‑‑ it was always kind of difficult to find the A5 organisations on the ITU‑T web site. There's a new cooperation tab on the top to find the various A5 and other MOU organisations easily located now. I think one of the more relevant things that happened was the determination of recommendation A1. Recommendation A1 is the working methods for ITU‑T. This has been a long journey. It's been multiple years since that multiple WTSA and working on agreement. We managed to get on agreement on the text and is currently out for determination. Even though we have clean text, there's a number of ‑‑ well, perhaps one remaining point on the number of supports for a new work item that was indicated in the circular that there will perhaps be some further discussion on this at the TSAG meeting. Perhaps based on some comments that come back from the determination of the consultation period with the determination. But in addition to that point, I think there's a number of notable changes that will affect some of the guidelines that we have for our work here. In a lot of cases, it's taken some of the guidelines that we have already agreed in Study Group 15 that we will follow. Added those to the main working methods in A1. There's an example between clearer work and nonnormative work. There's a standard formulation of the work programme management where the A1 is now more prescriptive on various roles. We already had a lot of this in our guidelines in Study Group 15. This has been uploaded to A1. The same thing with the integration of remote participation and electronic tools as standard practice and using the ITU tools to do that. There's the collaboration and agreement in activities. It used to be in A1. Now it is in its own separate document. We'll be having a discussion later this week. I think it is this week on ‑‑ with the Management Team to propose an update to the Study Group 15 guidelines based on the revised A1. And after the approval of this, the next thing TSAG will move on to is updating the rapporteurs and editor manual. Just to remind everyone, there’s a rapporteur and editor's manual that TSAG has. We'll be looking to update that. Again, I expect that a number of the details that we have within the Study Group 15 guidelines will be uploaded to this. Next, I want to highlight to industry engagement. Based where there's an action plan for vibrant engagement of industry and TSAG will now convene an engagement workshop to execute on this. The most recent one was in March of this year. And provided and highlighted several presentations, relevant to Study Group 15. As well, I would like to highlight that PCG, Vice Chair, presented several of our success stories that we had developed at our last Study Group meeting. TSAG in the industry engagement is also looking at creating a new mechanism for new and emerging technologies. This is, for example, new work items. We have the discussion of new work items within the discussions and questions. There's some desire from some Study Groups to have a specific and common process for all of this. Anyway. This is in discussion. One thing that's been looked at within this group is the Strategic Plan.
we're going to have a discussion on this tomorrow at lunchtime. Where one of the rapporteurs from this is going to overview the ITU Strategic Plan, the priorities, and how we updated the priorities to ensure that we have a more general reference that ITU‑T is not only responsible for international numbering resource which is all that was there before. That's all ITU‑T did. Now it has the more general reference that we develop the international standards. In addition to this, and the guidance from council to even more generalise it to globalise ICT interoperability. There's various enhancements proposed to the Strategic Plan and the financial plan as well to support that. We'll talk about the relevance of that to the work of Study Group 15 and to our financial support from TSB tomorrow in the session. In the lunchtime session we'll review this. Scroll up success stories as I mentioned before. We had created a number of success stories at last plenary. We have a new liaison from TSAG that is highlighted how they would like to focus the success stories and looking for specific references to the success of the particular work. Now this is no problem here for Study Group 15. We have wide industry implementation of our successes. Perhaps we ‑‑ you know, we think it is obvious. We didn't write it all down. We have that opportunity now to make that update and the success stories. We're going to have another discussion on this. This will be Thursday at lunchtime. It is a highlight for the rapporteurs to challenge I have for you. We would like at least two success stories that are in a good shape from what TSAG is looking for to continue to highlight the Working Group of Study Group 15. This is going to be used to highlight the success of the work. We want to make sure that Study Group 15 is part of this. The next thing I want to highlight is the lead Study Group concept. As you know, Study Group 15 is the lead Study Group for access, transport network, networking, and optimal technology. There are other Study Group that is are lead Study Groups for maybe 12 or more topics. There's been the last discussion with the WTSA. That's too many topics. What does lead Study Group really mean? So, there's liaison from TSAG. We're going to have a discussion on this. I believe it is tomorrow morning in the period zero to look at the ‑‑ at that discussion and to give our feedback on how from Study Group 15 we've been leveraging lead Study Group and how we would think it would be going forward.
Next, I want to briefly tell you about metrics. One of the results a few years ago in ITU‑T was the development and refining of metrics for all of the work from the downloads. If you look at Study Group 15, we remain the largest. We have the number one download. In Study Group 3, they line up in Working Parties. G709 is the number two download from the Working Party 3. It is the number three download from Working Party 1. This shows the broad interest across all of the Working Parties. If you see here, there's another slide to give you an indication of where all of the contributions are. So, this is a view if you scroll down a bit to see that at least this time Question 13 has pulled out in front again as the most contributions. You see that we're counting TDs as well. So, I think that's why they pulled ahead. In any case, another interesting one is an average time to a new work item to approval. Some of the questions in Working Party 2 take longer to progress to the most sufficient. Thank you to question two. Seven months in Question 12.
So, let's move on to the next point here. I wanted to highlight the replacement of the oldest building. The main point here is meetings in Geneva. It will be on council. There's a discussion of a continuity plan where there's space available in other facilities. But this comes at a cost. There's been a proposal for so‑called meeting hubs where other countries can offer to host. But there's limited availability here. It is outside of group 28 and 29's room. It is all in person. I would love to invite you all back to Montreal. We've done it twice now. I think it is time for someone else to host us. I'll talk about more of that in a few minutes. But smart Africa. We have liaison from TSAG on that. I think with that, as I've mentioned before, we created the Regional Group for Africa. There's an excellent response. They had their initial meeting. I look forward to receiving the report later in the meeting. This is just a summary of all of the liaisons from TSAG.
Any questions on the report from TSAG.
If we could go to the next one. This is in guidance. This is in TD224. This is our set of guidelines that we have our Study Group 15. If you scroll down a little bit, there's two guidelines that we're proposing an update on. The first one is the AAP Best Practices. Is this showing in change mode? This is on point. We discovered a new undocumented case where we discovered in AAP the last call comments are withdrawn. We didn't have sort of written down what the process was for that. We had the case happen since the last plenary meeting. This process here where if the comments are withdrawn, the result is that while there are no comments. The document proceeds. We just wanted to write this down. This is what we followed in the case. For full transparency, we wanted to make sure it was written down in the process.
So, that's the change to the first one. If you scroll to the second one, which is the ‑‑ it is the virtual meeting procedures. There was an update of the supplement that was approved in January of this year. This is on the guidelines of the fully virtual meetings. Based on that, we updated the references and four types, like this, a physical meeting. This is not just a physical meeting, there's fully virtual, physical meeting with remote participation, which mean you can make an intervention, and physical meeting with webcasting. What we're doing here at plenary, it is a physical meeting with webcasting. We'll have physical meeting with remote participation for the rest of the meeting with the rapporteur, so there can be remote interventions. We needed to add the points. These were the terms that were defined now. We've just added that there and a little bit of guidelines around that.
So, those are the updates that we propose here. We approve the guidelines. We can approve them now. Maybe we'll wait to the closing plenary to approve it all as a set perhaps. Folks can review this. We'll approve this at closing plenary. Okay. Any comments or questions on this? If not, let's move to the next Agenda Item please. The next Agenda Item is the report of the meeting in October. Maybe you could bring up the report. We have ‑‑ four reports. Which is the report from the plenary as well as this is ‑‑ yeah. So, five, six, seven, and eight. The first one is the report of the plenary. Then we have the reports of each of the Working Parties. And I reviewed the report of the plenary briefly, of course, at last plenary. This is the final ones that are posted. Any comments on these? Okay. Or we can approve those. Okay. So, next back to our agenda. It is ‑‑ these are the interim activities and their reports. Since the last meeting. Maybe to ask, so that I don't have to talk. Maybe while there's no one ‑‑ I was going to ask you to the Working Party chairs to introduce what's happened here in each of the meetings. This is ‑‑ but Working Party one is not here today. Okay. Anyway. These are the Working Party 1 meetings that have happened with the reports listed. Then we have the Working Party 2 meetings that have happened since the last meeting with the reports listed there. Then we have the Working Party 3 meetings with their reports listed.
All right. Let me ask the Working Party 2 Vice Chair or now the Working Party 2 Chair. Is there anything that you would like to point out with the Working Party 2 interim meetings. Maybe grab a microphone. If there's anything you would like to highlight. Meetings in question five and six physically. Also, you have a list of response group activities down there. The meeting reports are included in the Working Party 2 opening plenary meeting. Going to discuss those meetings.
CHAIR: Thank you. I'll ask the Working Party 3 Chair and anything to note.
SPEAKER:  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Four of the five questions in Working Party 3 had in‑person interim meetings. Then we had the usual set of respondent activities along with that. These will be discussed in more detail in the Working Party 3 opening plenary. I won't take more time for your meeting to go through the details.
CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much. Any questions on this reports? Not seeing any. Let's move to the next Agenda Item. This is the ‑‑ that was the interim activities. Now we have the status of liaisons. We'll start ‑‑ I believe this was the liaison rapporteur reports in 227 and 228. Well, there's the list of liaison rapporteurs. Just to remind everyone. There's no changes for the last time. We can just kind of scroll down here. This highlights who our liaison rapporteurs to various entities who are listed on the left. As you see here. What we ‑‑ of course, on the bottom, we have the RPCG roles where we have the PGC leaders indicated here. The electronic working methods. The rapporteurs are asked to provide a report before the plenary, so at beginning of the meeting. The electronic working methods rapporteurs and the group is asked to provide a report at the end of the meeting. If you have any issues, from electronic working methods perspective, please contact one of the electronic working methods and you are a representative in your Working Party. They will be compiling any issues that we identified. We will be then communicating those to TSB and working with them to improve, of course, the processes. Then as I mentioned the liaison rapporteurs provide the documents before the meeting.
So, you can see the reports listed here from each of the organisations. You know, for example, there's FSAN from Dennis and Jessie had a report of 802.7. Can you scroll down? We're not going to go over those here. I would invite the rapporteurs for topics of interest and coordination with the groups to include this in your agendas and invite them to provide reports to you as necessary in your question meetings. Okay. I thank you all to all of the liaison rapporteurs for providing your reports before the start of the meeting. Next on the agenda on the list is 232. Is this the PCG agenda? Oh, this is the list of liaisons. Okay. 232 is just the list of income liaisons. These are the ones ‑‑ this includes the TSAG liaisons. That I had summarised. This is the full list from various outside organisations, for example, including some of the ones that we have liaison rapporteurs for. But these are typically addressed to individual questions. Sometimes your group of questions. There's a web page here that shows the particular list. We, you know, track them here as is shown here. Hiroshi had provided the summary of the tracking. There's a web page that was listed above. There was a documentation and indication of where all of the liaisons were from and which questions it is for. In some cases, where they are directed to all questions. I've asked PCG to look at those and see if indeed it is all questions or if it needs to be directed to one of the particular groups. If not, the promotion and coordination group will review that.
The liaison on the Study Group 15 web page which goes to the liaison page. It should go ‑‑ I think you need to perhaps fix it. All right. You can take that offline to fix this URL was rejected error. All right. Any comments on the liaisons? Not seeing any. So, the next one this is the PCG agenda in PD275. I ask PCG Chair to introduce this please.
SPEAKER:  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you open the file please? ED275, Chair.
SPEAKER:  Promotion of the plan is ongoing. We promote major events. We published the paper and the communication in networking special edition. We hold three workshops in the plenary meetings and the promotional activities will continue throughout the meeting. In Section 4, yes, regarding the PSG reaching the standardisation gap, we received the contribution and more than 90 statements submitted and among them for those requiring action, we invite the relevant questions, Working Parties, and Study Group management to review and provide input. In section 10. Scroll down please to section 10. Yes. We received one contribution from Canada. Which is related to a success story. The PCG we will hold a meeting in P.5 to review the promotion and coordination activities and discuss remaining issues. In addition to the sessions that will be had this week on especially topics they need the Study Group and the success story. We would like to invite all concerned and interested experts to join the meeting. Thank you.
CHAIR: Thank you very much. Do we have any comments or questions on the agenda for the promotion coordination group? Mr. Mansfield, please. Maybe you have to turn the microphone on?
SPEAKER:  Yeah. It is from Canada. One thing I wanted to point out is for the success story we have a lunch time discussion on Thursday. We can use that time as well to talk about success stories and to explain a bit about what TSAG is asking for the me liaison. Thank you.
SPEAKER:  Okay. Thank you very much, Scott, for that. As TSAG mentioned, we have the extra success stories on Wednesday. And the additional one on the lead Study Group topic. Is that tomorrow morning. Is the ITU web site like all down. Like nothing works? Or is it? Because I'm trying to go there too. I don't get anything. I got ‑‑ I got any ITU and URL it is rejected. Are other colleagues having difficulty with the ITU web site? Hopefully you've downloaded copies of these and we can review. So, the next one is the status of the draft recommendations. This is in TD229. Okay. Hiroshi, maybe you could summarise the status of these texts for us?
SPEAKER:  This TD229 summarises the status which we consented at the last meeting. This list shows one recommendation; one draft recommendation sent back to this Study Group for approval on the ‑‑ oh. Another draft recommendation was approved. I was sent back to the Study Group meeting for approval. Thank you.
CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much for the summary. Any comments on the status for the draft recommendations that have been consented or determined? Okay. Hiroshi, just as a test here, which Wifi are you on?
SPEAKER:  ITU Study Group 15.
CHAIR: Can you change to your guest room? I just turned the Wifi off. It works for me. I have a cellar laptop. It just works. Unfortunately.
SPEAKER:  Thank you. Now it works.
CHAIR: Okay.
All right. The problem was with the ITU Wifi here in the ‑‑ is it working generally now? There was some local issue perhaps. All right. Let's continue. Thank you.
SPEAKER:  Thank you. This is from Kenya. Now that the platform is working. I'm looking at Agenda Item 223. What was written is something different. If that clarification could be meant.
CHAIR: The clarification is you are looking at TD275 of plenary, what was presented is TD275 general. There's two different TD categories. Two different series for documents. There's the general series and plenary series. It was presented TD275 of the general series. Thank you. Sorry for that confusion. This is TD279 of the general series. This is for hosting future meetings. As I said, the Study Group 15 Management Team is keen on arraigning for us to have in‑person hosts when ‑‑ for the rest of the study period. Of course, beyond. If you just scroll down a little bit here. There's additional background here. If you would like all of the details, council document 65 is an update on the business continuity for ITU meetings during the construction period of the new ITU buildings. If you want all of the details, have a look at that. I'll just summarise that as I mentioned before from the fourth quarter of '28 to probably the first quarter of 2030 will not be able to hold meetings in the ITU buildings. The completion is planned for 2031. The responsibility for finding hosts is with the Study Group 15 Management Team. We have several options available. The business continuity plan. They note there's about 60 meetings a year that are held at the headquarters of ITU in Geneva. The only viable ones for Study Group 15, because we're so big, is a big meeting that we need a lot of parallel meeting rooms. Other Study Groups just need one or two meeting rooms. We need a lot of parallel meeting rooms, at least in the current configuration.
So, the only options in Geneva are CICG, PAL Expo, and the UN facility. Just to note, from a timing perspective, CICG is also renovation at same time and will not be available. Until 2029. Perhaps the end of the possibility may be possible. But there's some changes in that previously there was a grant by the Swiss government. There was no cost for ITU to host meetings and NCICG. Currently, that's no longer the case. So, the cost for hosting Study Group 15 meeting which would be a two‑week meetings for 12‑14 rooms for the two weeks would be ‑‑ in this contribution in the order of 250,000 Swiss Francs. The alternative, of course, is member state hosting of the Study Group 15 plenaries outside of Geneva and the experience that we're having here in Montreal highlights that the member state can host with the generous sponsorship from one or more study sector members. As a result, I continue to invite everyone to look in to hosting Study Group 15 plenary in your country and to work with your administration if you are a sector member to work with your administration to promote that.
Now, for planning purposes, what are you looking at. If you scroll down, where we do not yet have locations for any meetings after this meeting. So, we're hoping to finalise the next meeting which is in the February/March time frame of 2027. It is our goal to finalise that at this meeting, we're having some discussions about that. These are the proposed dates that we have currently proposed. All of ‑‑ for both the first meeting of 2027, the second meeting of 2027, and then the meeting right before WTSA in 2028. The dates that we've chosen here and the top three are avoiding as many holidays as we can and avoiding as many other meetings where experts attend as possible. That's our current view of the best dates from the Management Team perspective. We're working with a number of potential hosts to ‑‑ for us to meet. We certainly need more hosts, because that's just this study period. The next study period if you scroll down, the first two meetings are also affected. Those two in 2029 were also looking for hosts. Just to remind everyone that the expectation for the meeting host is that the host covers all of the meeting facility and support costs as well as to frame TSB travel expenses and, of course, you need to offer VISA support to ensure that many of the delegates can attend in person.
Again, I would invite everyone to look at possibility for hosting us and please come talk to myself or Hiroshi about the possibilities. Even if you don't think that you could host a big meeting, I would highlight for this meeting we have a list of hosts; right? As an industry and sector member and contribute a little bit and still contribute to the fact that we can have the hosted meeting in person for Study Group 15 while ITU is rebuilding the headquarters facility in Geneva. Any questions, ladies and gentlemen, on hosting?
SPEAKER:  Thank you. With regards to the second bullet, the last bullet is one is country dependent. We are talking about the course that we have to travel. In this case, what are the parameters? Is it ‑‑ it is not TSB. You know who travels.
CHAIR: Yes. On the TSB travel for the meeting. There are three TSB that are supported by the host. The travel expenses are based on the ITU travel expense guidelines on ‑‑ what ‑‑ there's a set per diem, I believe, is what is indicated. And, so, it’s on how far it is from Geneva. I think over a certain distance the airfare is a different cost, depending on how far you have to travel. But, of course, it includes, you know, living expenses. For Study Group 15, there's the support of three TSB members.
Okay. All right. Thank you very much. I look forward to discussing this further. If you have any further questions, we can discuss this offline. Please come and don't hesitate to contact me. Okay. Let's move on to the objectives for the meeting. The first we'll just scroll down to annex A which is in the document on the objectives for this Study Group meeting. The first, of course, is to review the interim activities that we have already done. Review the TSAG outcomes and appoint new Working Party chairs and rapporteurs for providing guidance for the working group 15. We have sole judge of that. We're preparing text for the Study Group approval for determination. I don't think we'll have any for determination. The consent and agreement and then we'll process the liaison statements, plan interim activities, review the work programme, update the other roles, and prepare our involvement and, of course, promotional activities which I highlighted at the beginning. So that's our objectives for the meeting. Any comments on that? Let's move to TD233 which is ‑‑ this is the list, I believe, of potential documents for consent.
SPEAKER:  TD233 is a list of candidate draft for this kind of approval and recommendation, and also 32 candidate draft for consent as listed here. It is categorised by Working Parties, Working Party 1, Working Party 2, and Working Party 3 has a longest of candidates for consent. It was a list of candidate drafts for agreement. Which is up a couple to information ‑‑ informative documents as listed here. These are the candidates. We'll discuss and then we'll decide whether or not consent to agree on this draft. Thank you, Chair.
CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much, Hiroshi. Any comments on these texts for consent and agreement that have been presented? And all of the documents are available in TD currently as indicated there. I'm not seeing any requests. Let's move to the time plan for the meeting. This is in TD248. Revision three, I think. Is that correct, Hiroshi. This is the general series. TD248 revision 3. If you could summarise perhaps the changes from the main ‑‑ the original agenda and the collective letter for us please.
SPEAKER:  Okay. Thank you. Each shows the difference from the previous version. The region shows only the difference from the previous version. There are several changes step by step. Region three is the latest one. Basically, time plan is shown using the table as shown here. Or next ‑‑ second week. But some are planned during the large break or during the weekends. There are some also texts shown on ‑‑ such as on page one or as notes below each table for the first week and second week. And the final page lists notes on the joint sessions listed on the last page. Especially the latest change is the session tomorrow morning. Planned in slot zero, starts at 8:15 instead at 8:00 as you see here. It is on the information session on the Study Group where they mentioned it by the Chair. Also, we added the meeting on the ITU standard stories to be held on Thursday lunch break. 1:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Thursday, 2nd of July. We have several no lunch break sessions. Please take a look at the text on TD248 revision 3. I also would like to mention there are three workshopped related to the meeting. The one will start just after this opening plenary. The second one takes place during the weekend. About five or six days’ time from now. Next Sunday. Then we'll have a joint workshop. Just meetly after this meeting. Which means ‑‑ Saturday, 11th of July. In addition to the table, quite a few activities out there. Please be careful. Using this opportunity, I would like to mention that we are meeting here for today. From Tuesday to Friday this week, we will use McGill University's campus. We need to go there. It takes, like, 15 ‑‑ 15 or 20 minutes on foot depending on how fast you walk. But please consider it takes some time to go there. Please prepare to be on time for each session. Thank you, Chair.
CHAIR: Thank you very much, Hiroshi or summarising the agenda and schedule for the meeting here over the next two weeks. Are there any comments or questions on the points? Okay. Just to highlight ‑‑ just a reminder on today. We might want to look at today here. We have coming up after the break is the first workshop which is in this room. Following the ‑‑ following lunch, the room will be split into three. We'll have the opening Working Party plenaries for two and three for the opening. Then we'll split into questions and in the fourth period, we split the fourth period into two. So, we could get a little bit more initial work here before we ‑‑ before we move to McGill University tomorrow. The opening reception and welcome event will be just outside here after the session closes today. It is ‑‑ this one is sponsored by Ciena, Ericsson, Corning, and Lightera as I mentioned before. All right. Any other clarifications? Let's move to the logistics. The meeting facility and logistics in TD230. Hiroshi, if you could summarise that.
SPEAKER:  Thank you, Chair. Okay. TD230 shows aspects of the meeting. This is a meeting which is taking place outside of Geneva. It is a little bit different from the usual logistics of here. Section one is the same as this. 1.1 shows the document categorisation. They show the document measures. I would like to take this opportunity to mention from the next meeting, early 2027, we are migrating to a new version of document posting. The user interface should be more straightforward, we believe. And it is ‑‑ should be easier and also intuitive to submit your documents and it has a function to extract some meta data from the original Word documents, so there's no inconsistency between the web page and the Word file. Nevertheless, I would like to invite everyone to play with some of the test environments where TSB is providing for the new document posting. It takes place a few months after ‑‑ from now. But to avoid any last‑minute surprise, please play with the new system. Second two shows the avenues of this. From Tuesday to Friday. In general, the classrooms are available only from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
Tomorrow's early morning session starts at 8:15 thanks to the good negotiation by the meeting planner. We are set at 8:15. But please note to consider to start earlier than 9:00 a.m. from Tuesday next ‑‑ this week to the Friday. In the second week, we will be in the hotel. We are free to start early or finish later. As we do in Geneva. Fortunately, we got more than 16 student volunteers to help us. Many volunteers are wearing ITU logo t‑shirts with ITU logo. They will guide you to the correct meeting place. There are two buildings. They are sitting side by side. It should be easier. But to make sure the volunteers will guide us to the correct ‑‑ correct building and then correct meeting. After this, it is more or less the same as usual ballistics document as you see. At the end, they contact the information. The same e‑mail can be used to conduct myself and the Emmanuelle as assistant. Thank you, Chair.
CHAIR: Okay. I thank you very much, Hiroshi. I guess just to help everyone, the students that were mentioned yesterday who will be on campus on the McGill campus. There's three main entrances to the McGill campus when you are talking up there. There will be students in ITU t‑shirts. If you are looking for how to get to the room that you need to get to, just look for one of the students with an ITU t‑shirt and they will guide you to which building and where the room to go to and so on. But question please?
SPEAKER:  Steve Glen, question to the rapporteur. I notice the link to the TD to the meeting room allocation takes you to the Geneva room meeting page. It is no use to us.
CHAIR: Maybe you could highlight where the meeting information schedule would be, Hiroshi please.
SPEAKER:  Thank you, Steve, for your very good question. It is very important for everyone to be able to find out the correct meeting group. It should be followed from my meeting space and from my work space. But you can go there. You can go ‑‑ first, you need to log in. Then you need to go to the meeting section. But I would suggest simply typing remote.ITU.int. This leads you to the web page of the My Meetings session. And we are using this platform to indicate physical meeting room, so that this page is not only useful for remote participants, but also the in‑person participants. And, for example, if you look at this page, it is shown in Geneva time. It is 15:00 means 9:00 a.m. in Montreal time. If you look, you see a small indication of the name of the place. It shows the meeting room. If there's nothing, this is the name of the meeting room in this hotel. In the case of McGill University, we showed the name of the building and then after the slash, we put the name and number of the meeting room in each building. So, in short, go to the My Meeting session page. Then please find out your session. And find out your ‑‑ find out the physical meeting room, even if you participate in person. Thank you.
CHAIR: Thank you, Hiroshi. I think it would be useful if we could have a direct link on the Study Group 15 home page. So please work with the TSB colleagues to make sure that the link on the Study Group 15 home page goes to somewhere. Even if you have to log in, then to get there, I think we need to, like, we want to reduce the amount of confusion of where people are going.
SPEAKER:  Yeah. Okay. Also to save some clicks.
CHAIR: Yes, please. Mr. Freddie, please. Once you get ‑‑ figure out how to turn the microphone on. I think it is on.
SPEAKER:  Is it on?
CHAIR: Yes.
SPEAKER:  Thank you. Even that page there's no meeting for Q5 yet loaded. The one that you just showed. It is not complete yet. Just so you are aware. Thanks.
CHAIR: For today or tomorrow?
SPEAKER:  Tomorrow.
CHAIR: Oh, for tomorrow.
SPEAKER:  You see Q11 and Q12. But it is not complete yet.
CHAIR: We'll work with the meeting planners to identify getting that organised. I know Scott has been working with them to make sure we have it all ‑‑ we have it all organised.
SPEAKER:  So, I wanted to say I've been in contact with the meeting planners. The only day that's complete right now is Monday. We're working on getting the other rooms, pictures, and all of that stuff done.
CHAIR: And in the system. Yeah.
SPEAKER:  In the system. Exactly.
CHAIR: For today it is clear where you need to be. It is either this room where you are right now or when the walls come through one or the other.
SPEAKER:  The other thing we tried to do, but you haven't in the case. That is the question will be in all week. There's a couple of places where we couldn't see that because of the size of some of them. If you notice something wrong, let me know.
CHAIR: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions on the schedule? Okay. Let's move then to the document allocation then, Hiroshi in TD 231 please. 
CHAIR: Summarising the documentation.
SPEAKER:  Thank you, Chair. This is a simple document. it is allocated on the orientation of the documents. If you corrected one thing already, if you look at Q4. 283 and 284 are allocated in for Q4. But I actually it should be ‑‑ it should be allocated to 23. We made a correction on the Word document and also on the web page of the TD's web page. There's ‑‑ these are the correct date. Although it shows Q4. And I believe other locations should be current. Regarding the TDs, TDs are added as we go and progress the meeting. This is ‑‑ please consider this is a snapshot at this moment. We'll have more TDs as we work through them. Through the meeting.
SPEAKER:  Thank you, Chair.
CHAIR: Okay. Thank you very much. Any comments on the or questions on the document allocation? Okay. Then let's move to the final pieces of the agenda before we break for coffee here. Just to highlight that there are two networking socials. The first one is today. It is going to be a today just outside here and that will be at 6:00 after the meeting. Then the next one will be next Monday. It will be here in the hotel. We'll let you know the details of that then. Just to highlight that the ‑‑ again that the sponsors for this meeting. There's a typo here on one of the names here that's underlined. That's Lightera not Luxtera. Only one R. Light. So, the main sponsor for this event with the Government of Canada hosting is the IEE 802, Ericsson, Ciena, Corning, Lightera, and Tour Montreal. We have three workshops. The first workshop will be at 11:00. Right after the coffee break. Then we have two other workshops on July 5th and July 11th. Look forward to all of you joining us for those workshops. So, with that, is there any further discussion? Okay. With is that, then we can close the opening plenary and I wish everyone a most successful meeting. Now, before we break for coffee, the photographer was just here. I wanted him to get a picture of everybody. And he walked out the door. He was going to find us a location to meet. Or to gather for a big group photo. Maybe if someone could go ‑‑ could open the door. Could you ‑‑ Steve? For the group photo. Where should we? Just meet outside here and you'll stand up and take a photo of all of us. Okay. So, it is coffee break time now. If everyone could sort of join us, we'll take a group photo in that end of the hallway in the back there and please join us out there. We'll have a group photo right before the coffee break. Thank you.
(Meeting is adjourned)