Are CableCARDS Going Away?

This is a quick question and answer conducted with Alticast CTO, John Carlucci.  To give you a little background, please refer to this link below:

The Hill reports that STELA legislation in congress would remove the requirement for use of CableCards in operators leased devices. (http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/199385-overnight-tech-satellite-bill-in-the-works)

A few questions:

What does removal of integration ban mean?

Operators no longer have to use CableCARD.

Why is that good?

CableCARDs are based on technology from the 1990s. They are large, expensive, consume a lot of power, and need to be physically installed into STB.

Why is this bad?

CableCARDs provided a simple means to integrate Content Protection into a STB and allowed operators to obtain and rapidly deploy STB from many suppliers, not just from CA providers. They also allowed migration to a common security when operator systems merge.

What you should know?

Downloadable conditional access solutions that eliminate the need for CableCARDs while maintaing CA independence have been deployed for many years.  In North America,  Cablevision has been deploying such a solution based on open standards since 2010. Alticast was fortunate to play a critical role in the deployment.  Alticast can provide easy software based content protection download of any conditional access into any STB.