United Kingdom: Competition and Markets Authority published commitments by Amazon Web Services and Microsoft to reduce egress fees and improve interoperability in UK cloud markets

On 31 March 2026, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published voluntary commitments by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft to reduce egress fees and improve interoperability in UK cloud markets, following the CMA's 2025 market investigation into cloud services (cloud MI), which concluded that both firms hold significant market power and that data egress fees and barriers to interoperability restrict switching and multi-cloud use by UK customers. The commitments apply to UK businesses and public sector organisations using cloud services from AWS and Microsoft. Under the commitments, both firms will remove egress fees from UK customer contracts for a switching period of at least 180 days from the point at which a customer decides to move at least one service to a rival provider; both firms will also reduce egress fees for multi-cloud data transfers and will introduce new products to directly connect their data centres to one another and to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). In addition, both firms will establish formal processes for customers and competitors to request interoperability information and features, and will extend to UK customers any interoperability standards adopted under the EU Data Act. The CMA will continue to gather evidence from customers and competitors and will review progress through ongoing participative dialogue with AWS and Microsoft, with a Board review scheduled in 6 months.