It pays to certify devices for use on a public network. Certification for network use protects quality of service and sets a baseline for subscriber security. It’s a business that Motorola has been in for years, and one that now reaches into the realm of WiMAX. The WiMAX Forum has selected Motorola’s public key infrastructure (PKI) Center of Excellence for certification of WiMAX devices. This means that the Motorola Center can test products and issue certificates enabling authentication on a WiMAX network.
The Motorola PKI Center in San Diego is an extension of the company’s history in network security. Part of the reason for the separable security movement in set-tops, and the CableCARD mandate, was the limited number of companies able to secure content on cable networks. Motorola is part of a very elite group of companies working successfully in the cable conditional access (CA) space, and has extended that expertise to device certification across many different types of networks.
A few stats on the PKI Center:
- More than 65 billion dollars of entertainment content and data services are protected by Motorola’s PKI security every year.
- To date, the PKI Center has produced more than 650 million certificates.
- Motorola issued 180 million certificates through the PKI Center in 2008 alone.
The PKI Center certifies devices of all types for all kinds of networks, including cell phones, cable and satellite set-tops, cable modems, DSL modems, portable media players, two-way radios, and more. The addition of WiMAX certification authority comes just as mobile WiMAX is starting to roll out in the US.
Filed under: Motorola News, WiMAX

[...] Keeping WiMAX Devices Secure The WiMAX Forum has selected Motorola’s public key infrastructure (PKI) Center of Excellence for certification of WiMAX devices. This means that the Motorola Center in San Diego can test products and issue certificates enabling authentication on a WiMAX network. Related Stories:Digital Media Bytes – Motorola CES Edition [...]