United Kingdom: Closed consultation on Ofcom's Proposal to make a market investigation into public cloud infrastructure services

On 17 May 2023, the UK Office of Communications (Ofcom) closed its public consultation on its intention to make a market investigation reference into the supply of public cloud infrastructure services in the UK. The consultation sets out Ofcom’s interim findings and provisional views on recommendations included in its Interim Report on the cloud infrastructure market. The Report indicates potential limitations in competition within the UK cloud infrastructure services sector, primarily due to practices by leading providers Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft. In particular, the Report identifies market features that limit competition in the cloud infrastructure services market, such as high data transfer fees, committed spend discounts and technical restrictions. The Report notes that the identified features create challenges for businesses in switching or using multiple cloud providers and create market barriers due to the lack of interoperability between the systems. Based on its findings, Ofcom aims to gather stakeholders’ feedback on its plan to refer the cloud infrastructure market to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) to further examine the nature and extent of barriers and consider if there are interventions that could improve how the market works for customers and consumers.