Just hours before the European Commission’s (EC) deadline to finalize the Microsoft acquisition of Skype, for which negotiations have gone on almost three months, Cisco makes a last-minute appeal to the EC to regulate the deal.

Yes, regulate.

Why? Well, get this: Cisco claims it’s concerned that such a merger might make it possible for Skype to not play fairly with the other videoconferencing manufacturers’ standards. Meaning, they want to be assured that, should they decide to do so, Cisco can make their stuff work on a Skype network and vice-versa.

Really?

For years, the market’s been clamoring, no begging, companies like Cisco to make it so Skype users can call users of Cisco videoconferencing products. And, for years, Cisco has resisted. How? By not making it possible to have Skype video callers call users of Cisco gear.

But they could have! Sure, the Skype system uses a proprietary VoIP network called Skype protocol, but Cisco has never asked and never wanted to. Cisco has had its own system and wanted to force users to buy its gear to make video calls.

Until now.

All of a sudden, now that Skype is DOMINATING the Internet-based video calling market, Cisco cares.

Well, FINALLY!

I agree with Cisco’s cry for regulation. But I’m pissed they waited years and dismissed millions of users asking for this over and over and over again.

Let’s stop playing the game of avoiding standardization until it serves you. This is something that’s been needed in the VTC market for nearly a decade and would have made worldwide adoption of VTC technology a slam-dunk has it happened in 2005 — the year I first wrote about this. Now that Skype is part of Microsoft — and even bigger, technically, than Cisco — they wanna make this happen.

The most irritating thing is that even if Cisco can strong-arm the European Commission and Microsoft into guaranteeing that Skype will be open to use on other platforms, it still doesn’t mean that CISCO has to make its equipment work with Skype. Cisco just wants to be able to do it when it wants to do it. How about it go both ways? If Cisco wants Skype to be open, then Cisco should be required to communicate with other platforms as well.

We agree with you this time, Cisco. Make Skype open. But put your money where your mouth is and do the same. Let the industry move forward. Let the CONSUMERS win.