Education agency complains to Brussels about Microsoft

The European Commission has already begun an investigation into Microsoft over complaints about the interoperability of the company's technology. Interoperable technology conforms to public technical standards and allows other technologies to work easily with it.

The British Educational Communications and Technology Agency (Becta) has now sent its complaints dossier, previously filed with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT), to the Commission, it said.

"At a recent meeting with the Commission Becta set out its key areas of concern and their impact on the UK education system," said the organisation in a statement. "Becta believes that impediments to interoperability limit choice. In the context of the education system this can result in higher prices and a range of other unsatisfactory effects which have a negative impact on wider policy initiatives."

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Its complaint to the OFT said that Microsoft undertakes anti-competitive licensing practices in its schools software and that its Office 2007 product contains "impediments to effective interoperability".

With the OFT's permission, Becta has sent its interoperability-related complaint and its supporting evidence to the Commission.

"It is not just the interests of competitors and the wider marketplace that are damaged when barriers to effective interoperability are created," said Stephen Lucey, executive director of strategic technologies for Becta. "Such barriers can also damage the interests of education and training organisations, learners, teachers and parents."

The Commission's ongoing investigation was announced in January of this year following complaints about interoperability from the European Committee for Interoperable Systems, an interoperability-lobbying trade body which represent technology companies.

"In the complaint by ECIS, Microsoft is alleged to have illegally refused to disclose interoperability information across a broad range of products, including information related to its Office suite, a number of its server products, and also in relation to the so-called .NET Framework," said a Commission statement announcing the probe in January. "The Commission's examination will therefore focus on all these areas, including the question whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors' products."

Becta argues in its complaint that Microsoft supports its own technical protocols far better than it does industry standard ones when it comes to its Office products.

"This decision had the effect of requiring users to download and install a range of converters to enable them to interoperate with those competitor products," said a Becta statement. "Becta argued that such circumstances would constitute a barrier to the uptake and use of competitor products and limit competition and choice for educational users."

The OFT is still considering the complaints about Microsoft's School Agreement licensing model, Becta said.

Microsoft was the subject a €497 million Commission fine over interoperability in 2004, a fine which the EU's Court of First Instance backed in a decision in September of last year.