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AWS is following the decision made by Google Cloud earlier this year and linked the move to the European Data Act.
In response to growing regulatory pressure, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced free data transfers for customers that transfer to other cloud providers.
The company linked the decision to the European Data Act which came into effect in January. This act aims to give people and companies in the EU more control over what can be done with their data.
The decision means AWS will no longer charge customers that move their data out of AWS. This comes roughly two months after Google Cloud announced a similar decision.
AWS said that if a customer requires more than 100GB of data transfer out per month while transitioning, you can contact the company’s support to ask for free data transfer out to the internet (DTO) rates for the additional data.
“We believe in customer choice, including the choice to move your data out of AWS,” the company said in a blogpost. “The waiver on data transfer out to the internet charges also follows the direction set by the European Data Act and is available to all AWS customers around the world and from any AWS region.”
The decision means Microsoft is the last major cloud provider to continue enforcing these types of data transfer fees, unlike Google Cloud and AWS.
Mark Boost, the CEO of Civo, said that while removing egress fees is a “step in the right direction”, there is still more to be done as it’s only “one part of the equation”.
“The hyperscalers have not delivered on their lofty promises of low costs at scale that they set out more than a decade ago, complicating their offerings with convoluted pricing they are now backtracking on only due to regulatory pressure,” Boost said.
“Our focus should be on fairness, transparency and the customer’s experience at every turn – not the shareholders’ bottom line. Cloud should be about empowering IT teams to experiment and innovate using the technology, finding the services they need and paying a fair price for them.”
Meanwhile, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is investigating the country’s cloud services market to see if there are any potential factors impacting competition. This was prompted by a study that found that AWS and Microsoft had a combined market share of 70pc to 80pc in 2022. Google was the next closest competitor with a share of 5pc to 10pc.
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