Driving Innovation and Investment in the Clean Energy Economy
October 5th, 2010 by Phoebe Yang - Senior Advisor to the Chairman on BroadbandAnd as you all know far better than I, IEEE members are at the forefront of developing the interoperability standards that will drive the future of the Smart Grid, like GE’s John McDonald, an IEEE Fellow who chairs the Smart Grid interoperability panel.
We at the FCC recognize that open standards are a powerful force driving innovation and investment in the broadband ecosystem. Open standards allow manufacturers to achieve greater economies of scale, driving down the cost of devices and leading to larger product markets. And by opening the technical review process to a much larger group of people, open standards can enable stronger security.
But we also know that open standards alone are not enough; They need to be paired with policy. We need policies that accelerate the harmonization of standards, and policies that encourage these standards to be used. Just as a sculptor needs clay before she can produce a statue, technical innovators need the “raw materials” of broadband connectivity – like spectrum – before they can go to work creating the technologies of tomorrow.
