Brussels, 24/07/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission gave clearance on 24 July to the proposed acquisition of the UK-based NDS Group Limited, which provides technology and software to the pay-TV sector, by the internet company Cisco Systems, Inc. of the US, active in the development and sale of networking products for the internet (switches used in local and wide area networks, routers, enterprise unified communications, network and content security systems, etc.). The Commission concluded that the merged entity would continue to face competition from a number of strong competitors and that customers, namely pay-TV providers, would continue to have alternative suppliers in all markets concerned. This is despite some overlaps between the activities of the parties in the supply of hardware components, such as set-top-boxes (STBs), and software components (conditional access systems, middleware software, content management systems, etc.) and some vertical and conglomerate relations, particularly between NDS' pay-TV software activities and Cisco's STB activities. The investigation confirmed that these relations would remain limited and would not allow the merged entity to raise the costs for its competitors or to exclude them from the markets concerned. The sum paid by Cisco for this acquisition, notified on 18 June, was $5 billion. (FG/transl.rt)