Irdeto, SafeNet partner on mobile TV protection

More news from SafeNet, the Belcamp, Maryland-based IT security specialist (we reported yesterday that the company was making information about its silicon-proven soltuion available on chipestimate.com for chip designers). The company said that it would partner with Hoofddorp, Netherlands-based

Irdeto to enhance mobile TV protection. We note that this collaboration brings together two companies with competing technologies, both aiming to reduce risk and uncertainty for broadcasters and operators: conditional access and digital rights management (DRM).

Broadcasters and operators typically had to choose between conditional access and DRM when deploying mobile TV. Each of the solutions has strengths and weaknesses: Conditional access brings the experience of many years of deployment in cable, terrestrial, broadband, and satellite, while DRM exploits open standards favored by the mobile community. The partnership between the two companies brings together the world leaders in each area — Irdeto with more than a million mobile TV conditional access users in South Korea, South Africa, and Germany, and SafeNet with the world’s first commercial DRM deployment for mobile TV in the United Kingdom. The partnership agreement calls for SafeNet’s DRM Fusion Toolkit4TV to be integrated into Irdeto’s mobile broadcast conditional access solution.

Through support for SimulCrypt, a part of the overall DVB standard, the joint solution even supports simultaneous deployment of multiple mobile TV protection standards within a single system. This allows the system to use OMA BCAST smartcard profile with standards-enabled handsets and SIMs, and DVB-OSF with other handsets and broadcast-only devices.

Under the terms of the partnership, Irdeto and SafeNet will also collaborate on an end-to-end OMA 2 DRM solution, integrating SafeNet’s DRM Fusion Toolkit server solution, and Irdeto’s mobile DRM client solution.