Introduction:

Want a quick overview of what’s going on within the communications industry in different geographical areas of the world?  Check out the IEEE Global Communications Newsletter (GCN).  It appears monthly within IEEE Communications Magazine+. The GCN presents news, events, and activities related to global communications.  It also highlights significant IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) regional and chapter activities.  There are three or four articles in each GCN issue.  They are concise, informative and fun to read.  In a relatively short amount of time, you can get an overview of communications technology status, applications and policies from all over the world.

+ Note: We have previously called attention to the improvements in IEEE Communications magazine due to the Editor in Chief Steve Gorshe.  Please refer to:
https://techblog.comsoc.org/2011/06/04/ieee-communications-magazine-shows-great-improvement-in-past-year-thanks-to-editor-in-chief-steve-gorshe

Since mid 2007, the GCN scope, breadth and content have all greatly improved due to the diligent work of Editor in Chief Stefano Bregni -Associate Professor of Telecommunications Networks at Politecnico di Milano. This newsletter is interesting, informative and very well organized.  The diversity of articles and high quality content is the direct result of Stefano’s work ethic.  He reads all papers submitted and recommends changes to authors whenever appropriate. Because the authors are responsible for the actual papers, Professor Bregni does not rewrite articles or mandate a specific writing format or style. He will occassionaly make a few edits to correct evident flaws, but without significantly impacting the writing style or content provided by the contributing author.  

Under Stefano’s supervision, 148 papers have been published in GCN and six are in queue for future publication. The percentage of rejected papers is minimal (23 since 2007).  Several submissions have been provisionally accepted with major revisions recommended by Stefano.  Once those revisions were deemed acceptable, the individual paper was accepted for publication in GCN.

Professor Bregni says that geographical diversity is one of his major objectives. He has consistently asked the ComSoc Regional Directors to appoint Regional Delegates, to be responsible for selecting content and inviting ComSoc Chapters to submit articles from their respective regions.  This author is the North American (NA) Regional Delegate for GCN and has several times solicited papers from NA ComSoc Chapter Chairs with an offer to help organize and edit the articles.  We are hoping to receive papers on NA Communications activities and offer help to prospective authors who are reading this article.

Stefano says that “much work is needed in the Latin America Region” and he is waiting for a new regional co-ordinator there to help recruit articles from Latin Amercia.  There have been many GCN papers published from Asia and Europe.

Stefano remembers some GCN articles which were quite different from the other 99%.  For example, a couple of reports highlighting how computers could be used for teaching.  Others described the design and development of IT infrastructures in small, remote, rural villages in Colombia, Cambodia and Malaysia.  One example of the latter was a September 2009 article: The eBario Project: A Rural ICT Internet Access Initiative in Malaysia, by Alvin Yeo, Poline Bala, Peter Songan and Khairuddin Ab Hamid, Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, Malaysia.  Another example was an October 2010 article:  Project iREACH: Informatics for Rural Empowerment and Community Health in Cambodia by Brian Unger, University of Calgary, Canada, Chea Sok Huor, iREACH Project Manager, Cambodia,and Helena Grunfeld, Victoria University, Australia.  Please check the enthusiastic faces of the little girl watching and older woman using a PC to access the Internet, probably for the very first time.   

This author has published GCN articles in September 2010 and January 2011 on various ComSocSCV (Santa Clara Valley-USA) chapter activitiies and technical meetings.

Current and previous GCN issues can be accessed at  http://dl.comsoc.org/gcn/

As a volunteer run non profit organization, IEEE ComSoc (as well as other IEEE Societies) is very much dependent on the committment, effort and energy of its volunteer leaders.  Stefano is to be commended for the outstanding job he has done in several volunteer roles and especially for the GCN.  HIs IEEE ComSoc and other accomplishments are listed in his abbreviated biography below. 

We wish IEEE had more leaders who are as knowledgable, dedicated, and passionate about their volunteer work as Professor Bregni.  We should all be very appreciative and supportive of Stefano’s contributions to IEEE ComSoc.  I’d personally like to congratulate him on a superb job as the GCN Editor in Chief! 

About Stefano Bregni (IEEE M’93-SM’99)

Since 2004, he has been Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society, where he holds or has held the following official positions: Member at Large on the Board of Governors (2010-12), Director of Education (2008-11), Chair of the Transmission, Access and Optical Systems (TAOS) Technical Committee (2008-2010; Vice-Chair 2002-2003, 2006-2007; Secretary 2004-2005) and Member at Large of the Globecom/ICC Technical Content (GITC) committee (2007-2010). He is or has been Technical Program Vice-Chair of IEEE GLOBECOM 2012, Symposia Chair of GLOBECOM 2009 and Symposium Chair in eight other ICC and GLOBECOM conferences. He is Editor of the IEEE ComSoc Global Communications Newsletter, Associate Editor of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials Journal and Associate Editor of the HTE Infocommunications Journal. He was tutorial lecturer in four IEEE conferences ICC and GLOBECOM. He served on ETSI and ITU-T committees on digital network synchronization.

He is author of about 80 technical papers, mostly in IEEE conferences and journals, and of the two books Synchronization of Digital Telecommunications Networks (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2002; translated and published to Russian by MIR Publishers, Moskow, 2003) and Sistemi di trasmissione PDH e SDH – Multiplazione (PDH and SDH Transmission Systems – Multiplexing. Milano, Italy: McGraw-Hill, 2004). Stefano likes travelling, spending summer holidays in Greece, listening to music, playing sports, and photography.  More about his activities and accomplishments can be found on his personal web site:    http://home.dei.polimi.it/bregni/