The British regulator accused Amazon and Microsoft of monopolizing the cloud market

The British agency Ofcom, which regulates the telecommunications market, published openly appealed to the competition authority (CMA), calling for an investigation into Amazon and Microsoft corporations. Ofcom believes US companies are taking advantage of their dominant position in the UK cloud services market and preventing fair competition, harming both business growth and consumers.

According to the regulator’s estimates, Amazon and Microsoft together occupy 70-80% of the British cloud services market. Their closest competitor is Google with a share of 5–10%. The abuse of the provision, according to Ofcom, is that consumers are prevented from freely changing cloud service providers. This, in particular, is carried out using commissions for leaving the service and withdrawing data from there. Amazon and Microsoft have much higher commissions than other companies.

In addition, Amazon and Microsoft introduce additional technical barriers that make it difficult to get data out of their cloud services and transfer it to third-party providers. It is also noted that Amazon and Microsoft use a system of inflated discounts to tie consumers to their services.

Ofcom said it was transmitting its findings to the CMA, calling on the competition authority to review the data, make its decision and take action if necessary. Six months ago, in April, the regulator, based on the results of its own audit, had already recommended The CMA will conduct an antitrust investigation into the two companies.

Evgeny Khvostik