Robert Fish

Past President, IEEE Standards Association (IEEE SA) - Dr. Fish is a Lecturer in Computer Science at Princeton University. He also serves as President of the IEEE SA and a member of the Board of Directors of the IEEE. He is a member of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society. He co-edited a series in IEEE Communications Magazine on IEEE standards in communications and networking. He is Co-founder and formerly the Steering Committee Chair of IEEE ComSoc’s Consumer Communications and Networking Conference. For his leadership and contributions to the Multimedia Communications Technical Committee, Dr. Fish was the recipient of MMTC’s Distinguished Service Award. He was also awarded the Standards Medallion of the IEEE Standards Association. Dr. Fish was elected as a Fellow of the IEEE "for application of visual communications and networking.”

Connectivity & Telecom

Robert Fish2 October 2020

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,…
Connectivity & Telecom

Robert Fish28 September 2020

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…
News & Articles

Robert Fish16 June 2020

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…
Commentary & Perspectives

Robert Fish12 March 2020

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…
Commentary & Perspectives

Robert Fish12 December 2019

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…
Commentary & Perspectives

Robert Fish12 September 2019

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,…
Commentary & Perspectives

Robert Fish12 July 2019

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…
Commentary & Perspectives

Robert Fish15 March 2019

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…