18^th July 2000

Consumers Association
2 Marylebone Road
London NW1 4DF

Dear Sir/Madam

Microsoft, Intel and other USA companies have monopolies covering large parts of the IT sector, created, enlarged and sustained, through illegal anti-competitive practices. Daily large numbers of consumers are ripped off by them. They feel their only choices are these inferior (e.g. bugs, slow, lack of features etc), overpriced products from the USA. Not only has this been bad for consumers, both home users and business users, but our native IT industry has been effected.

There used to be six shops offering alternatives to the PC, in Norwich. Some have closed down completely, the others sell only PCs which come with Microsoft software as standard. Nearly all new computer outlets now are PC only. Also in the UK as a whole, three Acorn magazines have closed and the number of non-PC magazines is diminishing, thereby limiting the consumers choice even further.

As IT is one of the worlds largest industries, and is growing, this effects all our lives and the problem should no longer be ignored.

I have written and spoken to OFT to no avail, they hardly seem to know who Microsoft was, and obviously have no intention of fighting Microsoft on behalf of the UK consumer. As you know there is a court case in the USA, however the US government has never shown any sign in the past that it would take effective action, nor will it now, as it is not in their interest to do so. The case against IBM dragged on for 13 years and in the end was dropped. IBM to this day retains its mainframe monopoly. Even if they take action it will not take account of UK interests.

As you represent the consumer interest in the UK. I would hope that you could take action to ensure that this situation does not continue, preferably the situation should be reversed. Please take as much action as you are able to do.