United Kingdom: Announced Ofcom inquiry on cloud, messenger, and smart-device markets

On 22 September 2022, Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, announced the launch of a market study on cloud service providers in the UK. In particular, it will assess whether the position of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, and Google, which cover around 81% of the cloud infrastructure services market, has a negative impact on competition and consumers. If a negative impact is determined, Ofcom is able to take a number of further steps, including making policy recommendations to the government, taking competition or consumer enforcement action, and making a market investigation reference to the Competition and Markets Authority. Further, Ofcom announced that in the next months it will undertake similar market assessments of messenger and communication platforms such as WhatsApp and Zoom, and of smart-devices such as smart speakers.