Robert Fish
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Connectivity & Telecom
Universal Broadband Service and the Pandemic
This article was originally published in the IEEE Communications Standards Magazine. “Universal Service” has a long history as a goal for telecommunications networks. The meaning is simple: everyone who wants to be connected to the network will have the opportunity to be. A century ago, when the phrase was first coined,…
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Connectivity & Telecom
The More We Share, the More We Have: Spectrum Sharing as the New Frontier
This article was originally published in the IEEE Communications Standards Magazine. In Richard Feynman’s famous essay, There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom[1], he pointed out that innovation in physics had a great frontier to explore at smaller and smaller scales of matter. In communications, the frontier has been defined not…
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News & Articles
Transforming the IEEE Standards Association to Serve Evolving Needs for Consensus Platforms
Technology and business dynamics change much more rapidly in today’s global marketplace than they did in the past. In order to stay relevant, companies must be able to think and act faster, and that makes collaboration—between and among industries, technology areas, and geographic regions—more crucial to success than ever. It…
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Commentary & Perspectives
IEEE Open: A New Option for Open Source
The English word “patent” derives from the Latin “patere” meaning “to be open.” Its use in this sense comes from the letters patent issued by kings and other sovereigns wishing to make their edicts open for all to see. In contrast, letters close were edicts that were kept secret. We…
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Commentary & Perspectives
Is There an ICT Commons, and Is Tragedy Inevitable?
In 1968 the immensely influential article by Garrett Hardin titled “The Tragedy of the Commons”[1] was published. In it, Hardin argued that the result of holding exploitable property in common was that each user had an incentive to use more than their fair share before others did. The result was…
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Commentary & Perspectives
What Does Sustainability in Communications Mean?
In 2015 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) that are to be reached by the year 2030[1]. In essence, these goals are an attempt to resolve the issue of the “Great Divergence”[2] between industrially developed and undeveloped countries. SDG 9, labeled “Industry, Innovation,…
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Commentary & Perspectives
Technical Information Trade Deficits: Is This Information Mercantilism?
The fundamental idea behind global standards collaboration is that standardization needs to work seamlessly across borders and organizations in order to succeed. Of course, seamless standardization requires information exchanges among engineers and entities in countries and regions with different geopolitical view- points. Contrary to this spirit are some recent events…
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Commentary & Perspectives
Can Ethics be Standardized? Creating Modern Standards for Ethical Autonomous and Intelligent Systems
Technologists often react with an eye roll when the subject of ethics comes up. One interpretation of this is that they may think ethics is the purview of philosophy and religion and not really within their domain. An engineer may think of it as a “soft” subject, not the hard…