Cisco Slams On Skype Brakes

Steve Ballmer may have to wait a little longer before taking over Skype, depending on the outcome of Cisco's challenge of the deal.

Image: Design by Sean Driscoll

Microsoft’s plan to buy Skype is bringing on a clash of the tech titans before European regulators.

Cisco today challenged European officials’ approval of Microsoft’s $8.5 billion takeover of the video-calling and instant-messaging service. The Silicon Valley firm is concerned that with Skype in its portfolio, Microsoft could choke competition in the video-communication realm.

Marthin DeBeer, Cisco’s senior vice president of emerging business, wrote in a blog post today:

In the past decade video communications has moved out of the realm of science fiction to become commonplace in our homes, at work, and on mobile devices. Yet we remain some distance from the goal of video calls being as easy and ubiquitous as phone calls are today—across any network and between all devices.

Imagine how difficult it would be if you were limited to calling people who only use the same carrier or if your phone could only call certain brands and not others. Cisco wants to avoid this future for video communications, and therefore today appealed the European Commission’s approval of the Microsoft-Skype merger to the General Court of the European Union. Messagenet, a European VoIP service provider, has joined us in the appeal.

DeBeer explains in his post that his company isn’t looking to undermine the deal as a whole. But the company does want more restrictions placed on a Microsoft-Skype tie-up and to ensure that the combination doesn’t lock out other video services.

“Our goal is to make video calling as easy and seamless as email is today,” DeBeers wrote.