PRESS: Russia’s Akado may lose Cisco tech support under sanctions

MOSCOW, May 28 (PRIME) -- U.S. technological giant Cisco could deny technical support of the conditional access system to Russian connection operator Komkor, known as Akado Telecom, fully owned by tycoon Viktor Vekselberg’s Renova, due to sanctions already in June, business daily Vedomosti reported on Monday, citing sources.

Vekselberg and Renova were added to the U.S.’ sanctions in early April, the move that blocks assets in the U.S. and bans any deals with the blacklisted companies for U.S. citizens.

The conditional access system encodes TV signals transferred by a provider to a subscriber’s set-top-box, which makes pay TV actually the one to pay for. The system allows clients to watch the channels they pay for and protects content from unsanctioned access or piracy.

Akado currently uses the encoding system of firm NDS, which Cisco acquired in 2012.

Any connection issue in the system entails serious risks for the operator, because clients could lose TV, or the company could lose clients.

IT portal Telecom Daily’s General Director Denis Kuskov said a failure in the access system may affect some 220,000 Moscow clients of Akado. The average monthly bill of an Akado pay TV subscriber, using set-top box devices, is 380 rubles, which could total over 1 billion rubles in incomes for the provider per year, he said.

(61.6659 rubles – U.S. $1)

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