Liaison statement
LS on SG17 agreement on XSTP.epoch

ITU-T Study Group 17 (Security) is pleased to share that, at its plenary
meeting (Geneva, 1–10 June 2026), it agreed the text of XSTP.epoch — “Technical
Paper on Global Coordination Requirements for 2038-class rollover events
(including but not limited to 2036, 2038, 2106)”. The agreed Technical Paper is
provided as an attachment to this liaison statement.

The Chair of ITU-T SG17 warmly thanks the FIRST TIME SIG for its meeting of
June 2025, which created the awareness and the conditions that made it possible
to propose, establish, develop and agree this Technical Paper.

SG17 is, however, concerned that the world is facing simultaneously a
significant AI transformation, a migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC),
a migration to passwordless authentication, and a high level of regulatory
fragmentation across national and regional jurisdictions, resulting in a high
demand of fragmented implementations — all of this, to recall the mandate of
SG17, “in the context of an ever-growing attack surface and confronted with an
unbalanced threat landscape”.

Against this backdrop, and recognizing the timing of the ITU Plenipotentiary
Conference (PP-26) in November 2026, SG17 hopes that this topic may serve as an
input to the PP-26 discussions on Resolution 130, and that this Technical Paper
will alert all stakeholders to two points:

   - first, that there is another urgency that must be addressed — the global
   coordination of 2038-class rollover events; and

   – second, that there is a concerning question of where the resources will be
   found to achieve all of this at once.

Accordingly, and for action, SG17 would like to encourage the FIRST TIME SIG to
keep this community together, and to suggest any next steps — in terms of
awareness-raising, projects, or specific standards — that could help advance
this cause.

In parallel, SG17 will work to develop a press release to raise broader
awareness of this matter among stakeholders.

SG17 looks forward to continuing this collaboration with the FIRST TIME SIG,
and with the IETF and ETSI, ISO/IEC JTC 1, CEN/CENELEC, 3GPP, GSMA, IEEE-SA,
ITU-R and ITU-D, on this important matter.