The reports of the meetings of the Year 2000 Task Force have already been distributed and have been reviewed in the last Task Force meeting. The meeting of the ITU-T SG2 provides the opportunity to address the Plenary Session and to remind all present that, at 9 th November 1998, there are now 417 days left to the next Millennium. This is the total number of days left and quite clearly the number of working days is less.
Every day has to count.
Full details are in the Testing Sub Group report on the web site. Successful Year 2000 interoperability tests were carried out between Telia, Deutsche Telecom and Hong Kong Telecom in early September 1998. The group has agreed a process model, copy at Appendix B, set timescales of early December for agreement of the overall strategy and documentation of Testing Guidelines, Best practice and Reporting Specifications. I am pleased to advise that the number of Operators involved in this group has increased considerably and all are willing to take active part and share the workload. The group has moved from initially being European centric to global position with involvement from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and North America.