The history can help you to understand the future [Message from the Editor-in-Chief]

In this issue we present a Special Section on Telecommunications History, featuring by two articles entitled "The Roots of GPRS: The first System for Mobile Packet based Global Internet Access," and "The Creation of Standards for Global Mobile Communication: GSM and UMTS Standardization from 1982 to 2000," I would like to quote an old Chinese proverb: "The history can help you to understand the future." Therefore, the inclusion of these two excellent telecommunication history articles certainly enriches the content of this magazine. I invited the Chair of Communications History Committee, IEEE Communications Society, to write an introduction for the Special Section on Telecommunications History. Following the Special Section on Telecommunications History, the second part of this issue is a Feature Topic (FT) on "Cooperative and Cognitive paradigms for Green HetNets." The guest editors of this FT worked hard to select eight papers from a large number of submissions. The third part of this issue contains nine open call papers. Al papers mentioned are briefly summarized in the special section introduction.