Cable industry suppliers are working to comply with the July 2006...

weeks -- a solution cable has been pushing -- “a large and growing proportion of the finite technical resources of cable industry suppliers and cable operators will need to be dedicated toward meeting that deadline,” Comcast said. It said it was responding to questions raised by FCC Chmn. Powell on how soon cable needed a decision from the Commission whether the ban should be maintained, eliminated or postponed and how cable would use the time if the deadline were extended or scrapped. Comcast said cable already had entered the 18-month window usually necessary to design, test and produce set-top boxes. But efforts to comply with the integration ban “will require diversion of resources away from other matters, such as the development of a next-generation network architecture security for cable services that is reliable, renewable and downloadable and the development of very low-cost digital set-top boxes,” it said. If the FCC grants cable’s request for a delay in the integration ban, Comcast said, cable would use its “continuing support” for CableCARDs during the interim to “further prove that the industry is meeting its commitments to provide and support separate security without having to deprive customers of the integrated set-top boxes that millions of consumers are happy to use today.” Cable also would use the time to continue its intensive work on downloadable security, and might have a “workable” solution in place by year-end if resources aren’t diverted to integration ban compliance, Comcast said. It also pledged cable would use any postponement to work “vigorously and cooperatively” in the 2-way plug-&-play negotiations. “But of course the prospects for progress there are also dependent upon the behavior of many non-cable parties and the business issues being dealt with in those negotiations,” Comcast said.