Adara Technologies Solves PowerKEY Conditional Access ‘Time-out’ Issue for Aster Tecnodisa

TORONTO, ON – November 21, 2024 – Adara Technologies Inc. (www.adara-tech.com) today announced that it has implemented its PowerKEY 2024 Conditional Access Time-Wrap Solution that will allow Aster Tecnodisa of the Dominican Republic to continue operation of its Scientific-Atlanta, Cisco and Technicolor set-top boxes beyond the imminent timeout date in November 2024 for all such boxes. Aster Tecnodisa provides telecommunications services to approximately 45,000 subscribers in the Dominican Republic, including its capital, Santo Domingo.

The Adara solution solves the significant issue of what will soon impact millions of digital cable set-top boxes throughout the world that utilize the PowerKEY conditional access (CA) system developed by Scientific-Atlanta in the 1990’s. An internal CA time clock issue will cause each device to roll over to zero in late November 2024, preventing the set-top from decrypting video, effectively making each inoperable as early as a month prior. Operators have been looking for an efficient and cost-effective solution that would enable these set-tops to continue operation past the November date in order to eliminate the need for an expensive, customer-disruptive replacement of set-top boxes or a forced and rushed upgrade to IP video.

“PowerKEY conditional access has delivered rock-solid content security for decades, and the 20 million or so set-tops still in the field have many more years of excellent operational life remaining,” said Stan Koukarine, CTO and Co-founder of Adara Technologies. “Our solution, which has been chosen by dozens of cable operators worldwide including Aster Tecnodisa, covers all generations of PowerKEY devices, including embedded security, separable CableCARDs and downloadable DCAS devices. We are thrilled to have solved this for Aster and its 45,000 customers and look forward to implementing additional measures to enhance service reliability and customer experience, including a paced and customer-driven migration to Adara’s game-changing, multi-screen IP video Solution.”

Rubi Santana, Operations Manager for Aster Tecnodisa, said, “Adara’s PowerKEY Time-Out Solution has enabled us to avert a crisis by extending the shelf life of our set-top boxes without negatively impacting our customers, while we work to further enhance our customer experience through ongoing network upgrades for Broadband expansion and multiscreen IP video migration with the help of Adara over the next 3 years.”