Cisco to challenge Microsoft's take over of Skype in EU court

London, Feb 16 (ANI): Networking giant Cisco Systems has said that it will challenge Microsoft's acquisition of Skype in a European Union court, and added that conditions need to be set to ensure that the software firm does not block other video calling services.

Microsoft, in May last year announced that it was taking over the popular video calling service that has over 650 million users worldwide.

In October, the European Union had ruled the deal would not impede competition.

But Cisco has now called on the European Commission to introduce open standards similar to those used for mobile phones, The BBC reports.

"Cisco does not oppose the merger, but believes the European Commission should have placed conditions that would ensure greater standards-based interoperability," Cisco's video conferencing head Martin De Beer wrote in a blog post.

Cisco offers its own video conferencing service called WebEx. Open standards for video services would potentially allow calls to be made between WebEx and Skype, as well as other services like Google Video.

Without such a standard, De Beer said Microsoft could control "the future of video communications".

"Making a video-to-video call should be as easy as dialling 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," he added.

Meanwhile, European Commission spokesman Antoine Colombani said that they 'would defend their decision in court.' (ANI)