Matthew Starr Posts

On the afternoon before Thanksgiving, the FCC released a highly-anticipated draft of the Restoring Internet Freedom Order its commissioners will vote on in the Commission’s December 14 open meeting. The order, which will likely pass on a 3-2 party line vote, follows through on Chairman’s Pai’s proposal earlier this year to reclassify broadband back to an “information service” and largely eliminates all of the net neutrality rules the Commission passed in 2015.

In July, CompTIA filed comments with the FCC in response to its Restoring Internet Freedom NPRM. As you may know, the FCC released this NPRM in May, and its primary point of focus was a proposal to reclassify broadband internet access service (BIAS) as an information service.

Congress has bandied about reforming the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) for years, but there’s suddenly momentum to get something done in 2015. The Email Privacy Act (H.R. 699) introduced by Congressmen Kevin Yoder (R-KS) and Jared Polis (D-CO) in February currently has 287 cosponsors, the second highest total of any bill in the House.

Recently, CompTIA filed comments with the Federal Communications Commission on FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler’s proposal for new net neutrality rules. CompTIA believes that transparency, no-blocking and nondiscrimination rules are essential to protect and promote the interests of small businesses operating online. Without such rules, broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) could charge any business operating online for access, or prioritized access, to an ISP’s customers. Small busines ...

Last Thursday, representatives from two CompTIA member companies, Michael Paynter of Tier3 Technologies and Cameron Camp of ESET, flew to accompany me on a full day of meetings at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to discuss unlicensed use of TV white space spectrum and its value to small tech businesses, which can use it to innovate and grow. We met with staff members from all five FCC commissioners’ offices to make a final push to leave sufficient spectrum available for unlicen ...

In the wake of high-profile data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus, among others, Congress held three hearings on data security and data breaches last week. The first, held by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, dealt with specific financial sector issues related to data breaches, but the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Energy and Commerce Committee hearings looked at data security and data breaches from a number of different angles. Following the hearings, there is ...

On Jan. 14, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned two of the three net-neutrality rules initially passed by the Federal Communications Commission as part of its 2010 Open Internet Order. Despite what some have said, this ruling does not give carte blanche for ISPs to run roughshod over their customers. That’s because the overturn overshadowed perhaps the more important aspect of this decision: The court found that the FCC now has clear authority, under S ...

After last week’s House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on “Challenges and Opportunities in the 5 GHz Spectrum Band,” we have a much better sense of what the future holds for this proceeding. The FCC has heard from dozens of stakeholders on this issue through public comments and meetings and is expected to issue the first set of new rules for the 5 GHz spectrum band sometime early next year. There seemed to be a consensus on some of the less controversial aspects of this ...