To get around this problem, Ruckus, a wi-fi technology pioneer headquartered in Silicon Valley in the US, has now developed outdoor access points with a range of up to 20 km.
According to Bart Burstein, president of product management and business development for Ruckus Wireless, Ruckus can now deploy end-to-end broadband wireless access offering DSL capabilities. The solution includes a smart wi-fi outdoor access point with a 20 km range, a point-to-point backhaul system, and a wireless gateway to beam the wi-fi signals indoors.
Ruckus Wireless' new wi-fi technology products can be used to provide wireless services to businesses, housing complexes and schools. It calls its solution the industry's first end-to-end wireless broadband solution.
The products, which include two outdoor mesh access points (ZoneFlex 7762 and ZoneFlex 2741), a backhaul antenna system (ZoneFlex 7731), a customer premise gateway (MediaFlex 2200), combined with a remote wi-fi service management system, are called Wireless Broadband Access (WBA), said Burstein. They rely on unlicensed wi-fi spectrum using the 802.11g and faster 802.11n specification.
Ruckus has been serving its enterprise customers with its products for a few years now. Burstein told Computerworld Singapore that out of all these products, the latest innovation is the high-speed wireless backhaul, ZoneFlex 7731.
With the introduction of the ZoneFlex 7731, Burstein hopes that Ruckus' end-to-end wireless broadband solution will provide service providers a cost-effective, build-as-you- grow model for offering broadband data services in developing urban environments at a fraction of the cost of alternative approaches.
One of the breakthrough features of Ruckus's technology is that fewer access points (APs) are required with the WBA technology, because of its "beam forming" technology. This innovative technology helps reduce costs and directs the transmissions most effectively. Beam forming is basically the ability to focus a radio beam for a more reliable connection, avoiding obstacles.
"We believe Southeast Asia would be our strongest market," said Burstein, referring to its newly launched product lines, "because it is designed to bring wireless broadband to areas that don't have established copper or fibre [networks]."
In other words, Ruckus sees great opportunity in this region as the telecom infrastructure is not well-developed here. The region's "growing middle class, and a growing awareness of Internet via cell phones" makes Ruckus hopeful about its success in this market. "So we believe that Asia and Southeast Asia would be the first market followed by Africa and Eastern Europe which also would be strong."
Burstein quotes a Gartner study which says 54 per cent of worldwide growth in consumer broadband connections will come from emerging markets.
Ruckus is already present in Asia, working with PCCW in Hong Kong, China Mobile in China, SingTel in Singapore, Tikona in India and WiNet in Malaysia, among others. Its first customer was PCCW in Hong Kong that came into the relationship just four years ago. "Our primary customers are DSL carriers and our solution makes more sense when they have IPTV service," he said. "That is most prevalent in Europe. SingTel and PCCW are kind of exceptions in Asia."
"About three years ago, we launched our enterprise product line to do indoor and the outdoor but we are mid-range. There are others in the high range."
"Our presence in Asia is reasonably strong," he said. "The Philippines is our strongest market followed by Indonesia. We have got five to 15 resellers in each of the regions. We have been doubling our sales each year, in the first year and second year."
Ruckus' target customers in the region are established and new broadband operators in emerging markets, next-generation managed service providers, large-scale systems integrators, and rural operators in mature markets, says Burnstein.
One example of a company that is successfully using Ruckus' technology is Tikona in India. It is a carrier in Mumbai and it is able to serve 3,000 homes with only 15 wi-fi APs from Ruckus, down from 200 APs with conventional technology. According to Burstein, Tikona is now building a nationwide broadband network and the build-out started early in 2009. More than 5,000 Ruckus Wireless mesh APs are already deployed in production.
The other example is WiNet Broadband, a network operator serving Malaysia, which plans to roll out the WBA technology to serve 250,000 customers by the end of 2010 and one million subscribers over the next three years. It already operates in about 100 locations today and plans to operate in 2,000 locations by 2010. The company is investing US$283 million in this business over the next five years.
According to Burstein, the main benefit of using Ruckus is that it requires minimal installation time (months, not years), saves a lot in infrastructure capital expenditure, and provides an end-to-end system and unified management. "We are less expensive to purchase and much easier to operate," he said.
"Other benefits of Ruckus's technology are being highly adaptive and robust, simple to deploy, having a scalable capacity and high-signal penetration," said Burstein.
Ruckus provides, said Burstein, unparalleled cost/value relationship through its cost- competitive end-to-end solution, (both capital and operational expenses). Compared to WiMax deployment, it requires five times less capital expenditure--a highly attractive factor for the service providers in the emerging markets.