Cloudflare calls out Amazon Web Services on its pricing, says the company keeps it artificially inflated

Content Delivery Network Cloudflare slams Amazon Web Services

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince slammed Amazon Web Services (AWS) for  its pricing saying that their bandwidth pricing in particular "was bonkers."

AWS’s bandwidth pricing is bonkers. And they stand alone in the industry not discounting when their customers send traffic to peered networks. https://t.co/ONbJbukpYn

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— Matthew Prince

He wasn't done with just a tweet either, he wrote a lengthy blog post on his company's website explaining the mechanics of Amazon's "Egregious Egress."

Prince visualised the current AWS bandwidth pricing by giving an example of a bucket filled with water. He said that AWS filled that bucket with water and then charge customers based on, "how much water is in the bucket."

AWS charges its customers based on the amount of data delivered, for example - 1TB per month, but then pays for the bandwidth based on the capacity of the network. Extending this to the water bucket analogy, "AWS doesn't pay for the amount of water that ends up in their customers' buckets, but rather the capacity based on the diameter of the “hose” that is used to fill them."

"During the last ten years, industry wholesale transit prices have fallen an average of 23 percent annually," explains Prince.

"Compounded over that time, wholesale bandwidth is 93 percent less expensive than 10 years ago. However, AWS' egress fees over that same period have fallen by only 25 percent," He added.