PolyCipher, a non-profit company backed by three of the nation's largest MSOs, has taken the reins of a high-level industry project that aims to replace the clunky and expensive CableCARD with a much more elegant downloadable conditional access system (DCAS).

Although PolyCipher's mere existence and its general role with DCAS is not a huge secret, officials there and within the cable industry have been relatively tight-lipped about specifics and so far have been unwilling to speak publicly about the venture.

However, in a filing made this summer by the National Cable & Telecommunications Association to the Federal Communications Commission that seeks a limited waiver on the July 2007 embedded security set-top mandate, it was cited that cable operators have already invested $30 million in the establishment of PolyCipher, a joint venture of Comcast Corp., Time Warner Cable and Cox Communications.

Sources say Comcast and Time Warner each have a 40 percent piece of PolyCipher, and Cox controls the remaining 20 percent.

PolyCipher's primary purpose is DCAS, a separable security platform that will enlist a secure microprocessor and secure loader for the keys and other security elements that are delivered to the DCAS-enabled host, be it a digital television or set-top.

In some ways, PolyCipher will take over where the original NGNA LLC project left off. One primary component of the original NGNA RFI (request for information) was conditional access, and how operators could fix the existing Motorola-Scientific Atlanta duopoly by extracting the CA element–not just from the set-top–but from the network itself. While the CableCARD implementation provides set-top portability, it does little to unlock a cable system's legacy CA system at the network level.

The PolyCipher Web site (http://polycipher.com/) is short on detail, but does name "Chameleon"–apparently the product name (or internal codename) of the PolyCipher downloadable conditional access system.

At last check, PolyCipher had at least four full-time employees on the books, including CEO Tom Lookabaugh, the former president of the DiviCom division of what was then C-Cube Microsystems (DiviCom was sold to Harmonic Inc. in 1999; LSI Logic acquired C-Cube in 2001).

The primary functions of PolyCipher are based in the Denver area, but the company is also working with a separate subcontractor that specializes in secure silicon.

"There will be 20 [full-time employees] before you know it," said one knowledgeable source. With consultants and seconded personnel from cable operators added in, "there are a lot of moving parts...but the buck stops with Lookabaugh, basically."

Although PolyCipher has ties to Comcast, it is not tethered directly to Combined Conditional Access Development (CCAD), a 50-50 venture between Comcast and Motorola under which the companies are working on, among other things, next-gen CA systems and multi-stream CableCARDs based on Motorola's MediaCipher CA technology.

Although PolyCipher won't create and sell DCAS solutions, it's understood that it will oversee and analyze the effort, as well as select the components of the platform. PolyCipher's domain is said to cover sub component functions such as chip qualification, and operations of the keying facilities, as well as infrastructure and software security functions.

In this respect, some liken PolyCipher to an apolitical "execution engine" of DCAS–a streamlined, efficient entity that can turn on a dime and make decisions faster than the big MSOs can.

While PolyCipher will endeavor to keep DCAS on track and moving forward, it's widely acknowledged that CableLabs will step in to handle product certification for set-tops, TVs and other products that use DCAS, once things get that far.

The cable industry is "desperate to get DCAS working," says one cable exec.

And the industry has made some progress with prototype demos that show a Motorola box running on an SA network, and vice versa. Some see field trials of DCAS starting in mid-to-late 2007, with a possible national rollout in 2008.