| Six persons from the Kanwal
Rekhi School of Information Technology at IIT and a team
of 26 engineers from Bangalore based VLSI (Very Large
Scale Integration) have worked for over two years to produce
this indigenous set-top box for Telenext. The STB will
be priced at Rs 3,500 and the organisation is in talks
with MSOs and cable operators, as consumers cannot directly
buy it, as the encrypted smart card of their cable operators
may not match this.
Broadband Pacenet India CEO S Ravindran says that their
advanced STBs (rather 'home genies') will be economically
priced around the same level of Rs 3,500. ETC Networks
JS Kohli says that he expects penetration to touch 50-60
per cent levels if the current "pay channels"
remain "pay".
Experts say the primary issue will relate to the smart-card
user identification elements such as the public and
private keys. "Pacenet's STBs have RSA data security
for enhanced security. The 128-bit configuration will
take 50 years to crack whereas the 1024-bit configuration
is almost impossible to crack. Pacenet home genies have
the latter," says Ravindran.
Ravindran goes on to add: "Our 'home genies' will
have elements such as RSA 1024-bit; DES (Digital Encryption
System) and AES (advanced encryption systems); with
peoplemeter facilities. We have plans to get these STBs
certified by companies such as Business Proton and Tata
Consultancy Services and then sell them in the global
markets."
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