Comcast Forms Conditional Access Ventures With Motorola

Alan Breznick, Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

March 8, 2005

1 Min Read
Comcast Forms Conditional Access Ventures With Motorola

Comcast Corp. is getting into the conditional access business. Comcast and Motorola Inc. unveiled a "broader strategic relationship" today that calls for North America's largest MSO to continue buying digital cable set-tops and network equipment from Motorola for years to come. The set-top purchase agreement is valued at more than $1 billion, making it the biggest in Comcast's history. But, even more notably, Comcast and Motorola also agreed to create two joint conditional access (CA) ventures. The first joint venture will develop a next-generation conditional access system, using Motorola's MediaCipher as the foundation. The second joint venture will license conditional access and other cable technologies, including MediaCipher, to other U.S. MSOs and third-party providers. Comcast will manage the licensing venture, presumably meaning that it will be able to license Motorola's CA system to other set-top makers and cable operators. In a significant move, Motorola has granted both ventures a non-exclusive license for MediaCipher, its leading CA technology.

About the Author(s)

Alan Breznick

Cable/Video Practice Leader, Light Reading

Alan Breznick is a business editor and research analyst who has tracked the cable, broadband and video markets like an over-bred bloodhound for more than 20 years.

As a senior analyst at Light Reading's research arm, Heavy Reading, for six years, Alan authored numerous reports, columns, white papers and case studies, moderated dozens of webinars, and organized and hosted more than 15 -- count 'em --regional conferences on cable, broadband and IPTV technology topics. And all this while maintaining a summer job as an ostrich wrangler.

Before that, he was the founding editor of Light Reading Cable, transforming a monthly newsletter into a daily website. Prior to joining Light Reading, Alan was a broadband analyst for Kinetic Strategies and a contributing analyst for One Touch Intelligence.

He is based in the Toronto area, though is New York born and bred. Just ask, and he will take you on a power-walking tour of Manhattan, pointing out the tourist hotspots and the places that make up his personal timeline: The bench where he smoked his first pipe; the alley where he won his first fist fight. That kind of thing.

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