The document does say subject to change; and it doesn't say when it was compiled ( which is a bit annoying).

I will send an email to my microsoft contact to see he can confirm anything has changed.

Be a real shame, but I wonder if it is on purpose to keep the likes of red-gate products available..

does look purely marketing rather than that only enterprises would need to compress backups.

Will post a reply if I get one from MS contact.

Reply is :

"Both backup compression and data compression are enterprise edition features. Restoring a compressed backup can be done using any edition.

Usually the idea is that if it’s a scalability or availability related feature then its EE."

It must have been the restore bit i remembered.