Cloud Computing

Pursuant to the Law on securing and regulating cyberspace (SREN), Arcep is launching a public consultation on two sets of draft guidelines pertaining to:

• the costs that are likely to be taken into account when determining switching charges, other than egress (i.e. data transfer) fees;
• the costs that are likely to be taken into account when determining egress fees for customers using multiple cloud service providers at once (i.e. multicloud solutions).

The aim of this work is to remove any potential barriers to switching providers and adopting a multicloud approach, with the ultimate goal of giving businesses greater freedom of choice for cloud services. These are among the strategic objectives of Arcep’s “Ambition 2030,” and in line with the Authority’s commitment to open digital ecosystems, as part of a pro-innovation action plan.

Facilitating vendor switching by capping charges other than egress fees, which are now set at zero euros

Following a public consultation held in late 2024, and pursuant to the SREN Law, on 20 February 2025 Arcep adopted a Decision proposing to set the maximum amount that customers could be charged in egress fees when switching cloud service providers at zero euros. Following the proposal from Arcep, France’s Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs set this amount at zero euros, in her Order dated 17 November 2025.

The Authority has continued its work on this matter, and its ongoing dialogue with stakeholders on switching charges other than those related to data transfers. Today, it is presenting draft guidelines on the costs that are likely to be taken into account when determining these charges. This documents sets out the categories into which services (other than data transfer) directly related to the provider switching process might fall. It then analyses the costs associated with those categories that are likely to be billed as part of switching charges, up to 12 January 2027[1].

Facilitating the adoption of multicloud solutions by capping egress fees 

Arcep is also launching a public consultation on draft guidelines on costs tied directly to data transfers for customers adopting a multicloud solution. This document proposes a breakdown of the costs that are likely, or unlikely, to be factored into egress fees for multicloud customers. This breakdown is based on the description of the infrastructure enabling data transfers (including those tied to multicloud solutions) which were set out in the public consultation held in late 2024, and confirmed by stakeholders’ contributions[2].

Associated documents

• Draft guidelines on the costs that are likely to be taken into account when determining cloud computing service provider switching charges, other than egress fees 
• Draft guidelines on the costs that are likely to be taken into account when determining egress fees for customers adopting multicloud solutions