I'm trying to make sense of Ruckus's rural strategy for its IPTV products: The company uses multiple-antenna technology combined with proprietary streaming algorithms to provide voice, video, and data (802.11b/g compatible) across a home. The rural angle is intriguing, because rural telephone companies want to bring newer services (and higher per-customer revenue for the same wired infrastructure), but they can't afford to rewire homes to handle the network for multimedia and VoIP traversing a house.
Enter Ruckus. They say that because their system can carry streaming video and deliver other services, they're the perfect complement for rural telcos. The telco still does a truck roll, but Ruckus claims its MediaFlex system of gateways and adapters takes under an hour to install, and future additions can avoid a truck roll.
An hour is a pretty nice bar to set to keep costs low, and compares favorably to other home installs. A DirecTV installation at my house required two installers and about an hour to mount a satellite antenna, set up the receiver, and train us on the system. Obviously, the satellite industry considers an hour a profitable installation when factoring in lifetime customer value.
By contrast, in a DSL textbook I read nearly a decade ago, new telco services weren't considered profitable by large phone companies until they reached the point when only five percent required truck rolls. It took DSL and cable years to reach the point where most installs involve just sending a modem out. This has changed completely again with triple-play services, as Ruckus notes.
The latest press release from Ruckus notes 16 more rural telcos in addition to several they'd already signed.
When we give that figure we're comparing it against operators that are installing Cat-5 in someone's home, not a company that's just putting in a dish and running the signal over existing coax. In the IPTV world, carriers must wire or rewire homes with Cat-5, use HPNA over TP or get PLC adapters to run IP over power sockets. Most all carriers are doing MOCA (coax) or rewiring homes with Cat-5. That takes longer than one hour. Sorry for the confusion. david callisch
[Editor's Note: I should have been clear that I was comparing Ruckus favorably with a singler-room, one-receiver, satellite installation, and that the satellite TV world considers a one-hour installation profitable as part of lifetime customer value. I'll fix the post to clarify that but leave this comment and my reply in place.--gf]