European Commission Approves Ciscos Tandberg Acquisition

European Commission Approves Cisco Tandberg Acquisition snapvoip.blogspot.com/
Cisco announced today that it has received anti trust approval from European Commission and awaiting the US DOJ approval to complete the Ciscos acquisition of Tandberg for $3 Billion.
The EC approval is conditional based on appointment of monitoring trustees. Department of Justice has announced that it will not challenge the proposed acquisition in light of the commitments Cisco has made to the European Commission. Cisco and Tandberg is also awaiting the ongoing discussions in Brazil.

"We appreciate the thorough and efficient manner in which the Justice Department and the European Commission conducted their review of this transaction, and we are grateful for the leadership and close cooperation between the agencies throughout this process," said Marthin De Beer, senior vice president of Cisco's Emerging Technologies Business Group.  "Cisco has always strongly believed that industry expansion and growth is best fostered through open standards and interoperability, and our commitments to the Commission formalize our approach in this area.  Our commitments will promote multi-vendor interoperability and contribute to the ubiquity of video communications, which will benefit customers, competitors and the industry as a whole." 

Cisco's commitments to the EC also include divesting its TelePresence Interoperability Protocol (TIP) ownership and the library of open source software useful to implementers of TIP to an independent third party.  Cisco will also provide the third party, the industry body with all other rights necessary to implement TIP and authorize the industry body to license those rights to any interested party, royalty-free. 
 Cisco