Airvana and VeriSign have announced that they are working to deploy device certificates for Airvana’s HubBub UMTS femtocell. The certificates will be embedded into the HubBub UMTS femtocell, allowing operators to authenticate these devices before allowing access to core networks and services.
The work between VeriSign and Airvana builds on efforts currently taking place within the Femto Forum and the 3GPP SA3 security standards group to establish an implementation standard for network authentication for femtocells using a certificate-based model.
The joint effort is expected to drive authentication requirements for femtocells, which in turn will reportedly accelerate industry efforts toward a common approach to facilitate multi-vendor femtocell implementations.
According to the companies, the activity represents a step forward in the implementation of 3GPP’s overall femtocell-to-core network interface specifications including Iuh communications protocol and device management.
Glenn Laxdal, vice president of femtocell product management at Airvana, said: Both operators and subscribers must be confident that femtocell technology is highly secure in order to embrace it fully.
Through our work with VeriSign we are tackling one of the last implementation hurdles and will deliver to operators and subscribers femtocell technology that is backed by a recognized leader in security and authentication technology and services.
