Swiss content security specialist Nagra has announced a major US deal this week with fourth placed broadband provider Altice USA. The deployment will see Nagra’s conditional access technologies rolled out in a new line of 4K and HD set tops, and the Nagra products could be in pole position to replace existing legacy systems from Arris and Cisco.
Essentially Altice USA, made up of Cablevision Systems and Suddenlink Communications, looks to have decided that it no longer wanted to upgrade support for two conditional access systems in its cable headend, so instead opted for a single option. This includes Nagra’s MediaLive multiscreen video platform and its converged conditional access and DRM system Nagra Connect, and significantly, it can still house support for additional third-party security.
Nagra has been a long time partner of Dish Networks in the US, but this would represent its first major cable operator customer there although it has has a relationship with the smaller Cable One.
Nagra Connect covers OTT, IPTV and broadcast, while MediaLive can secure IP and QAM-based content like 4K UHD. This product pairing will be deployed across both Optimum (Cablevision) and Suddenlink subscriber bases – some 4.6 million consumers across 20 states. Nagra’s technologies can enable operators and smart TV manufacturers to offer pay TV and OTT video content and also has the stamp of approval from Netflix.
Nagra highlights that it can still enable an open set top environment by coexisting with legacy cable systems, without duplicating bandwidth, and the company says it has developed such a system in collaboration with Altice USA – to broaden security support within the set top. While a full switch out is not set in stone, the life of Arris’ Motorola assets, plus the conditional access system of which came out of the Scientific Atlanta part of Cisco, could be approaching their last hurrah as traditional cable evolves -neither Cisco or Arris seem too deeply concerned with retaining CA control of accounts.
Meanwhile, as the FCC’s open set top initiative appears dead and buried, cable operators are still backing a shift in technologies towards open set tops, which gives companies like Nagra and local IPTV DRM player Verimatrix, potential stepping stones – Altice has likely requested by taking a leaf from the book of its European operations with SFR in France, where it uses this same combination for 4K content, although at Portugal Telecom it uses PlayReady for DRM from Inside Secure.
Altice USA has yet to reveal the name of the 4K set top supplier which will support the new Nagra system, but of course this could be Nagra itself, which has a portfolio of hardware to choose from, including the IntuiTV UI and most recently its TV Key dongle, which it launched at CES this year and developed by working with Samsung TVs and MStar chips. A double win for Nagra at Altice USA would be huge, with TV Key potentially slotting into a void in the US market, in the shape of the failed US version of a conditional access module (CAM) – CableCard.
The TVkey framework is based on a Nagra-designed root of trust in TV chips which communicate securely with the TVkey device. This creates a Secure Media Path in a smart TV and enables strict enforcement of usage rules as required by Hollywood for the protection of high-value content.
With Nagra embracing its new role in security, there is a high chance that other DRM suppliers will jump into bed with the likes of Samsung, which is now saying it will talk to any conditional access or DRM system. The more DRM suppliers a manufacturer has a relationship with, the more desirable its products become.
Nagra teamed up with Altice’s French telco subsidiary SFR in late 2015 to launch a 4K UHD service and set top in France, using Nagra’s anyCast content security plus MediaLive, called the La Box Fiber Zive de SFR (Red Box SFR Fiber). The SFR box itself was “designed in France” which could mean anything from SFR designing it and Nagra software driving it, with the hardware coming from any of Netgem, Technicolor or Sagemcom. In the case of Altice USA, it may opt for one of its more familiar European cable hardware counterparts such as Sagemcom, providing it with its own beachhead.
“We are in a unique position to bring innovative products and services to Altice USA’s Optimum and Suddenlink customers by leveraging our global operational expertise, scale, resources, and key strategic partners like Nagra. We have been impressed by the flexibility Nagra has shown in adapting to US-specific requirements in a short amount of time, and this partnership will enable us to design integrated services to meet our customers’ expectations,” said Hakim Boubazine, co-president and COO, Altice USA.
“We are proving one more time that Nagra is the go-to expert in bringing new Ultra HD services and superior, high-quality customer experiences to market. Being selected by Altice USA shows how we can be a global partner to large multi-network operators while adapting to their local infrastructures and requirements. This creates economies of scale that reduce operator cost and increase operational efficiency through a single, flexible, global technology partner,” said Pierre Roy, EVP and COO, Nagra.
In July Nagra acquired Nexguard labs, the longest standing Forensic watermarking company in Europe, to go alongside its in-house system, to ensure it could deliver watermarked premium 4K content.
In December, Altice USA announced it will be skipping investments in DOCSIS 3.1 in favor of fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) upgrades over the next five years in plan called “Generation Gigaspeed”. This will be the biggest all-fiber upgrade of any cable operator in the US, passing some 8.3 million homes.