Government Action Threatens Net
Neutrality and Your Cloud Bill
David Linthicum
Proposed government policies will set
the standard for how cloud providers
work outside of Net Neutrality.
The Trump administration served notice earlier this
year that it intends to deregulate broadband internet
service companies. In effect, they would jettison the
Obama administration’s net neutrality rules.
The net neutrality rules, approved by the Federal Com-
munications Commission in 2015, aimed to preserve
the open internet and ensure that it could not be
divided into “pay-to-play” fast lanes. What this means
in the world of cloud computing is that they could not
pay ISPs to provide prioritization of network packets,
to favor one cloud provider over another.
Supporters of net neutrality have insisted the rules
are necessary to protect equal access to content on
the internet. Opponents said the rules unfairly sub-
jected broadband internet suppliers like Verizon,
AT&T, Comcast and Charter to utility-style regula-
tion. Our role at CTP is to look at how the changes will
affect our clients.
As summarized by Leigh Heyman, a former White
House staffer with the Obama administration, the
idea was to provide equal access to Internet resources,
no matter what relationship exists. Heyman goes on
to state that “Lacking Net Neutrality, vendors have
the flexibility now to charge new fees. Also, they can
invest in cloud providers and prioritize the packets.”
6 | THE DOPPLER | SUMMER 2017
The problem comes in when you consider the conflict
of interest. ISPs typically own media services, such as
cable TV services (e.g., Verizon, Time Warner, etc.).
Thus, mega-streamers such as Netflix are typically in
direct competition with ISPs. So, if you have a legal way
to poke your competitor in the eye, why wouldn’t you?
You also need to consider other cloud services that
focus more on the retail user, such as DropBox,
iCloud, Google, or, on small business, such as AWS
and Salesforce.com. If the ISPs start charging access
fees for these cloud providers, they will have to raise
prices to pass along the access fees to their custom-
ers who can least afford it. So, cloud services that may
have been free in the past could cost a few more dol-
lars a month. While that does not seem like a lot for
large businesses, small businesses could end up pay-
ing thousands more a month for cloud services that
were relatively economical before.
If the services cost more because of new access fees,
and we leverage cloud services to save money, then
the use of those cloud services becomes far less com-
pelling for retail and small business users. Moreover,
the strategic benefits of cloud computing, such as
agility and scalability, are not as important or valu-
able when you’re running a small chain of flower
shops, or even a large retail store.
Larger corporate users won’t feel the pinch of these
access fees, considering that they typically leverage
huge pipes to the Internet using specialized ISPs that
won’t charge these fees. Moreover, many use direct