BRUSSELS, April 22 (Reuters) - Broadcom's ( AVGO )

critics on Monday rejected the U.S. chipmaker's changes to its

cloud licensing practices, saying they do not address their

complaints about alleged price hikes, unfair software licensing

terms and tying products together.

Last week Broadcom ( AVGO ) Chief Executive Hock Tan in a blogpost

announced a raft of changes to newly acquired cloud computing

company VMware's licensing condition following complaints from

some EU business users and a trade group.

These included substantial price cuts to VMware's cloud

platform and changes allowing customers to move their workloads

from their own data centres to cloud providers and between cloud

providers.

Trade body CISPE, whose members include Amazon ( AMZN ) and

26 small EU cloud providers, French association of business

users Cigref and Austrian cloud service provider Anexia and

CISPE member said the issue was not about Broadcom's ( AVGO )

subscription licence model.

"What threatens the economic viability of many cloud

services used by customers in Europe, are the massive and

unjustifiable hikes in prices, the re-bundling of products,

altered basis of billing and the imposition of unfair software

licensing terms that restrict choice and lock-in customers and

partners," they said in a joint statement.

Broadcom ( AVGO ) was not immediately available for comment.

The groups urged EU antitrust regulators, which have asked

rivals and customers for their views, to open an investigation

into the issue.