Today at the National Cable & Telecommunications Association's National Show, Microsoft Corp. announced that it has submitted its initial draft of common language infrastructure (CLI) specifications for the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP), the cable industry's software standard for deploying interactive services to Cable Television Laboratories Inc. (CableLabs). The announcement demonstrates Microsoft's growing commitment to the development and adoption of advanced digital services by encouraging the market entry of new suppliers.

OCAP is part of the OpenCable initiative, which is managed by CableLabs, the cable television industry's nonprofit research and development consortium. To date, CableLabs has issued OCAP versions 1.0 and 2.0. Microsoft and CableLabs have agreed to work together to explore the potential of adding Microsoft� .NET CLI to OCAP. The proposed addition of .NET would expand the common runtime platform among a variety of computing devices including set-top boxes and PCs, making home entertainment networking simpler and more compelling to the consumer and creating expanded opportunities for cable operators.

Upon reviewing the initial draft of OCAP-CLI, CableLabs will seek comments from a working group of industry experts, which will make recommendations to be incorporated in Microsoft's draft. The incorporation of OCAP-CLI by CableLabs could offer cable operators a choice of development environments, allowing them to take advantage of Microsoft's ongoing investment and innovation of .NET. At the same time, such an extended OCAP specification would be fully backward-compatible, allowing cable operators to leverage and develop their OCAP 1.0 investment in the future. CableLabs is in the process of creating a working group of industry veterans to evaluate and refine the initial OCAP-CLI specifications. Integration of OCAP-CLI into the OCAP specifications will be considered later in the year.