For the past 15 months, the nation has been held to ransom for lack of clarity and information on the conditional access system (CAS). Neither the government, the broadcasters nor the multi-system operators (MSOs) have come forward with a transparent agenda for the people.
There have been dozens of seminars and conferences on CAS, with lobbies for and against it. Even this writer had, and has, opposing views on CAS in its current format.
CAS is excellent for India provided the mandate calls for open architecture boxes with a digital terrestrial tuner built in. First, it is incorrect to hold discussions on set-top boxes (STBs) without the software to implement CAS.
Factually, there are only a few major players in the CAS arena worldwide and it is correct to say that the proposed technology for India was developed years ago when the chips used in the STBs lacked adequate processing power.
It is well documented that since the advance of technology, these old systems have been hacked into, thereby leading to cable piracy
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
