Telia to replace IPTV CAS with castLabs Widevine managed service

castLabs announces its collaboration with Telia replacing their traditional CAS with Widevine CAS

BERLIN — An existing castLabs’ DRMtoday customer using its leading multi-DRM licensing (built on scalable multi-region Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure), for the Norwegian Telia Play OTT service, Telia has now extended the partnership and will replace the traditional CAS (Conditional Access Systems) on its IPTV network with castLabs’ Widevine CAS managed service.

CAS have been the required technology to secure content distributed in broadcast or multicast networks – traditional CAS, however, is not easy to maintain due to its specific legacy infrastructure, reliance on proprietary technologies, and high costs. Widevine CAS is the ideal solution to meet these challenges as it doesn’t require any proprietary set-top box middleware or device royalties and supports app-based implementation. As a cloud-based solution, it is easy to maintain yet provides the same high level of security as traditional CAS solutions.

Widevine selected castLabs as a principal partner for their Widevine CAS Third Party Labs (3PL) program which means that they are authorized to provide solutions, support, and ongoing technical expertise for operators of any size. As a satisfied castLabs’ customer for many years, it was then an obvious choice for Telia to choose castLabs as its Widevine CAS provider.

Telia’s OTT service includes various TV channels from a number of popular broadcasters such as Discovery Networks Europe, MTV Networks Europe, and Eurosport. Telia Digital TV also offers VOD services from Disney Channel, Discovery Channel, and Animal Planet, among others.

In the first phase of deployments, Telia, with the support of castLabs’ technical expertise, has migrated its current CAS system, enabling license deliveries and Android TV devices to support Widevine CAS. This has also enabled advanced use-cases such as group licensing, key rotation, and renewals for optimized license delivery, lower channel change latency, and improved security.

Telia chose to deploy Synamedia’s virtual Digital Content Manager (vDCM) headend featuring a DVB SimulCrypt-enabled scrambler integrated with castLabs’ Widevine CAS ECM Generator, and vDCM packager integrated with castLabs’ DRMtoday multi-DRM for hybrid system support.

“castLabs’ solution has fitted into our product strategy since 2016 when we started our first OTT project. Now the collaboration has extended even further and its product and expertise have been proven to effectively support our TV service content security strategy,” says Stein Ivar Nilsen, Video Acquisition & Distribution Manager at Telia. “The flexibility and extension of castLabs’ DRMtoday cloud service and its professional services allowed us to converge our PayTV CAS, and OTT DRM requirements into one single solution. castLabs provided us strong support and confidence during the whole Widevine CAS migration process.”