In early October, the European Union gave its blessings to the $12.5 billion merger between Microsoft and Skype. The two companies made the merger official later that month. Now a rival of Microsoft, Cisco, wants the EU to look again at the merger with Skype and ask for some new conditions to be placed on the company.
In a post on Cisco's web site, the company said that it has filed an appeal of the Microsoft-Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. While Cisco claims that it is not opposed to the merger of the two companies, it adds that Cisco, " ... believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability, to avoid any one company from being able to seek to control the future of video communications."
In the blog post, Cisco said that it has an issue with plans to link Skype with the Lync Enterprise Communications Platform that's handled by Microsoft. Cisco believes that such a plan would force other companies to use Skype exclusively for their video calls. Cisco added:
This appeal is about one thing only: securing standards-based interoperability in the video calling space. Our goal is to make video calling as easy and seamless as email is today. Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialing a phone number. Today, however, you can’t make seamless video calls from one platform to another, much to the frustration of consumers and business users alike.
ZDNet got a comment from Microsoft which said that the EU conducted a "thorough investigation of the acquisition" and was "confident" that the EU's decision to impose no conditions for the Skype merger will stand up to Cisco's appeal.
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