Cable Hails 141,000 CableCARDs Deployed, Concedes ‘Challenges’

Over 141,000 CableCARDs were distributed through Feb. 28 by MSOs representing 89% of cable subscribers in the country, NCTA said. Over 400 product models from 22 manufacturers have been “certified or verified” for CableCARD use by CableLabs, it said: “The large and continually growing number of CableCARDs and CableCARD-enabled devices that have been deployed reflects the burgeoning development of this technology. As with the deployment of any new technology, challenges do exist.” Where problems have cropped up, cable has been working to solve them, whatever the cause, NCTA said. But it’s “inaccurate” to blame all the problems on “a lobbying slogan” such as common reliance, as CE makers did in their ex parte filing, NCTA said.

Cable operators are each dealing with the challenges, NCTA said. MSOs “have internal teams assigned to CableCARD support issues, as well as business processes to identify and resolve issues as they arise,” it said. The cable industry has bolstered these efforts by setting up “a structured and collaborative process to deal with CableCARD deployment and support issues,” NCTA said. It said it and CableLabs have held weekly conference calls since Jan. “with MSO engineering and operations personnel involved in the fielding and support of CableCARD devices. These calls serve as a forum for sharing lessons learned and best practices, elevating issues for resolution, and disseminating information from manufacturers on software and hardware fixes as problems are identified.”

As for multistream CableCARD availability, CableLabs on March 22 “qualified” a Scientific-Atlanta device, NCTA said. CableLabs is expected to complete “full testing and qualification” of multi-stream CableCARDs “early in 2006,” NCTA said: “It is expected that multi-stream CableCARD devices will be widely available for use and commercially available by mid-2006 and will be supported by MSOs.”

CE makers told the FCC that the MSOs and their CableCARD vendors have been the ones most responsible for the many CableCARD snafus. In individual summaries accompanying the NCTA report, the 6 major MSOs -- Adelphia, Cablevision, Charter, Comcast, Cox and Time Warner -- pointed the finger back at CE. For example, Comcast complained that many DTV models from virtually all CE makers require a software upgrade from the CE company to operate properly with CableCARDs. “However, representatives from the manufacturer often deny the need for any upgrade until the issue is escalated through CableLabs,” Comcast said.

As a result of this and other glitches, Comcast said one of its regions has estimated that most CableCARD installations can’t be completed on the first visit to a home. “Multiple trips and several hours of labor” are required for CableCARD deployment, compared with a single visit and less than 30 min. of labor “for the typical set-top installation,” Comcast said: Calls to many manufacturers’ customer support lines often result in inaccurate information and ‘finger-pointing’ back to the Comcast system or CableCARD.” It said a common response from CE is that until Comcast upgrades its CableCARD to the latest version of software, the CE maker is unwilling to help, “even though we have never verified that upgrading CableCARD software alone has successfully resolved any issue.”

Successful CableCARD deployments “generally” result when a problem ticket is booted up to the top of the chain of command at CableLabs or the CE maker, Comcast said: “However, this process is typically very time consuming and may take weeks before an issue is resolved. Occasionally when an issue is escalated to a manufacturer and the representative is engaged in our troubleshooting process, the manufacturer will misrepresent the final resolution. For example, if many different things are tried in the process of troubleshooting, and the set finally begins working properly, the typical claim will be that something Comcast was doing wrong created the issue, even though any basis for such a claim is absent.”