Ofcom, the UK’s media regulator, is reportedly set to call for an antitrust investigation into Amazon and Microsoft’s dominance of the country’s cloud computing market.

According to sources cited by Reuters, the watchdog will push for the probe this week months after first signalling intent for an antitrust investigation in April. Ofcom is set to publish its final report on the pair’s cloud dominance on Thursday, with Reuters claiming that this will include a call to action for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

Amazon and Microsoft have cornered between 60-70 per cent of the UK’s cloud computing market, with third-placed Google only having around a 10 per cent market share.

In a preliminary report, Ofcom has warned that the current state of the UK’s cloud computing market has hindered competition and made it difficult for some existing customers to negotiate better deals with providers. Restrictions and discounts encouraging the use of a single provider despite better alternatives, the report said, could be anti-competitive.

It said: "We are concerned that constraints on customers' ability to use more than one provider could make it harder for smaller cloud providers to win business and compete with the market leaders.”

At the time, both Amazon and Microsoft said they would work with Ofcom ahead of the final publication, with Microsoft submitting a 58-page response which said that an investigation could harm consumers.

Microsoft’s response said: “It would be a particularly unfortunate outcome if UK businesses and public sector customers faced less vibrant and competitive cloud solutions on a global stage than those available to their rivals in the EU, the US and China.”

Microsoft’s soon-to-be subsidiary Activision Blizzard made similar noises about the UK’s viability as a home for tech innovation when the CMA tried to block the Xbox company’s $69 billion takeover on cloud gaming-related grounds. Activision Blizzard chief exec Bobby Kotick said that the UK risked becoming “Death Valley” for tech if it blocked the deal.

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