Charter Seeks CableCARD Waiver For Downloadable Security Deployment
Charter Communications wants to deploy new set-top boxes with downloadable security features and has asked the FCC for a waiver of its ban on leasing boxes with integrated security and navigation features. Such a waiver would let it put in place an “open-standard-downloadable security solution that supports third-party retail devices,” the cable operator said in its request (http://xrl.us/bnxn3m). Charter requested a two-year waiver of the FCC’s integrated security ban. After two years, it would no longer deploy new integrated security devices “and therefore would no longer need a waiver from the integration ban,” the company said.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Consumer electronics advocates aren’t convinced. “CEA and its members are still reviewing the filing, but we are skeptical given past cable promises on downloadable security,” said Julie Kearney, vice president-regulatory affairs. The waiver request said Charter’s planned downloadable security system would combine software-based security with a “hardware root of trust housed in a commodity chip.” Such a chip would use a “key ladder” that is made available on an “open, royalty-free basis so that the chips may also be available to retail host manufacturers through established supply chains,” the request said.
Charter said it will continue to support CableCARDs even if it gets the waiver. It has deployed about 2.75 million set-top boxes that include CableCARDs and has leased another 33,000 cards to subscribers who use them in retail devices, it said. The downloadable security deployment, and the extensive testing of it Charter will conduct over the two-year waiver period, should give manufacturers confidence in making investments to develop new retail downloadable security products once they've seen the system has been successfully implemented and that downloadable devices can work without the need for CableCARDs, it said.
The plans are similar to Cablevision’s already-deployed downloadable security system, the waiver request said. Charter CEO Tom Rutledge, who led Cablevision’s deployment in 2009 and 2010, “would like to do the same for Charter,” the waiver request said. “But this undertaking will be much more difficult for Charter than it was for Cablevision.” That’s because where Cablevision has a highly-concentrated subscriber base and network, Charter’s systems and subscribers are far more spread out and it operates far more headend facilities, the request said. Upgrading each of its nearly 200 headends will take time, it said. Cablevision at the time it got the waiver had systems only in the New York metropolitan area, and the operator has since acquired some systems in the Western U.S.
That’s why it needs the waiver, Charter said. “Since Charter will need to start rolling out downloadable security boxes to customers well before the conversion of any cable systems, the initial ... devices will include two security systems,” it said. “A chip that would serve as the future platform for non-integrated downloadable security, and traditional integrated security” for use until it can turn on the newer system, it said.