Ruckus Wireless this week said that it has now shipped over 1 million access points using its Beamflex smart antenna technology which allows TV signals to be streamed over wi-fi in the home.
When we last spokes to Ruckus is was talking about dealings with 30 operators, but that number has now grow to 125 broadband operators around the world.
Ruckus was founded in 2004, and spent nearly two years incubating its smart wi-fi technology before shipping its first product in the second quarter of 2005. Ruckus says its revenues in 2006 were five times what they were in 2005 and it uses a business model of getting pay TV suppliers the world over to offer its products directly to consumers.
The current BeamFlex product is built around the 802.11g standard and it is expected to ship a HD capable system based on the 802.11n product shortly.
Ruckus systems have 6 directional antenna built in and the system is constantly dynamically searching for the best route around a home with up to 63 different discreet patterns that the wireless gateway can select.
Ruckus has both a feedback loop built into the systems, to see if there is any interference in one channel, so it can then avoid it, and it has the ability to re-send lost packets, which is vital when those packets are used for video, which is very susceptible to error.
One of the earlier investors in Ruckus was Motorola, and it wouldn’t surprise us at all for Motorola to integrate the product into its set top systems and end up buying the company.