Verizon: We Need 3 Years

In June, the Federal Communications Commission gave Verizon Communications at least a year before the telephone company would have to comply with the agency's ban on set-tops with integrated security functions — an extension the FCC denied to most cable operators.

Now Verizon wants more: Last week, it asked the agency to have until 2010.

In an appeal filed with the FCC, Verizon noted that a common standard for software-downloadable set-top security is not expected to be available by July 2008.

That's the date by which Verizon, under the June 29 ruling from the FCC's Media Bureau, would have to deploy high-end set-tops — which have high-definition or digital video recorder features — with separable encryption mechanisms.

Cable is developing the Downloadable Conditional Access Security standard, which it expects to widely deploy before the end of 2009.

Verizon said that, in the absence of a downloadable-security standard, it would have to “expend enormous resources” developing an interim solution, because it does not have “the existing, off-the-shelf option for complying with the integration ban that traditional cable companies possess.”

That's a reference to CableCards, the removable hardware devices most cable operators have been deploying with their set-tops since the FCC's ban went into effect July 1. Verizon's FiOS TV service uses hybrid Motorola set-tops that combine traditional cable technology for video with Internet Protocol-based connectivity for interactive services.

“Forcing Verizon to implement a security solution twice will waste resources, time and effort to the company's detriment and, ultimately, the detriment of consumers,” the company said.

Cable operators made very similar arguments in asking the FCC to extend the deadline. But the FCC's Media Bureau, in denying the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's request for a waiver until cable's downloadable-security standard has been deployed, said, “The commission already has acknowledged the cost of separating security … and concluded that the benefits outweighed any potential harms.”

The NCTA, also last week, requested that FCC commissioners review that decision. The association reiterated its position that the order “arbitrarily and irrationally denied the NCTA relief for cable operators' use of the very devices for which others were granted waivers.”