TAKING THE WIRESOUT OF IPTV

Independent telco Consolidated Communications is among the first IPTV providers to remove the wires from its digital TV service through a partnership with Wi-Fi vendor Ruckus Wireless. The ILEC is deploying Ruckus' multimedia system, Smart Wi-Fi, as its in-home connectivity standard, bringing IPTV sans the Ethernet line to its subscriber base.

Consolidated is offering the Ruckus MediaFlex gear to its new subscribers as a standard — and free — part of its digital video service. The twelfth-largest ILEC, which serves customers in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Texas, is one of the first broadband providers to offer the service in the U.S. Ruckus already works with regional provider Pioneer Telephone for Smart Wi-Fi, but otherwise most of its business has been abroad with operators serving smaller regions. Ruckus, which makes Wi-Fi hotspot technologies for both indoor and outdoor deployments, has shipped more than 1.5 million Wi-Fi units to carriers across the globe since commercializing Smart Wi-Fi in 2005.

Broadband operators in the U.S. have looked at Wi-Fi in the past but have largely dismissed it for IPTV services. As a technology, Wi-Fi has a history of being unstable and subject to interference. Simply closing a door can interrupt the Wi-Fi connection, so navigating around all the furniture, mirrors, doors, cordless phones and other interference-causing objects in the home made it undesirable for a service that requires a constant connection, said David Callisch, vice president of marketing for Ruckus.

“Wi-Fi has been phenomenally lousy for any kind of in-home significant, useful services,” Callisch said. “Carriers up until this point had a bad taste in their mouth relative to Wi-Fi. They had tried to deploy it in different applications and found it to be highly unreliable since it really wasn't designed to deliver a constant flow of traffic without packet errors.”

For this reason, Ruckus had a hard time convincing carriers that its system would be any different. It has taken the last 12 to 18 months just to prove its validity, Callisch said, but once it did, it became useful for both the carrier and subscriber. According to Callisch, Ruckus' patented beamforming technology quadruples the range of Wi-Fi signals by focusing them only where they are needed. The Smart Wi-Fi technology automatically steers the signals around any obstacles in the home. When interference is detected, the Wi-Fi signal continuously reroutes to find the best path. Even if a consumer moves a TV or adds a new couch, for example, the system can adapt to the environment and support real-time, delay-sensitive applications such as streaming digital video, Callisch said.

“It is like holding a flashlight in your hand in a dark room,” he said. “If you have a flashlight in hand, it's focused where you are pointing it. If someone walks in front of that light, I can point it in a different direction. I do this all automatically in my box. They call it beamforming, making the signal go where it needs to go. As a result, if we start to see errors, we can literally steer it in real time.”

Until now, IPTV installations consisting of wiring or rewiring customers' homes with Ethernet cable took between three and six hours. Using Ruckus' Smart Wi-Fi system allows Consolidated to significantly reduce its installation time by as much as half, as well as the costs associated with traditional cabling, said J.J. Hollie, product manager for digital video services for Consolidated. He estimated that it has saved the company between $150 and $300 per installation. It also gives customers flexibility to put their TV sets wherever they choose, without worrying about range or reliability.

Consolidated has been deploying Ruckus units for about the past month in its own offices and the homes of its customers. So far Hollie said there have been no problems with the signal outside of slight interference issues with cordless phones, which Ruckus has overcome through frequency hopping. He said the company has also seen an increase in its sales and the number of installations it has done as a result of going wireless.

“That was the key for us to use Ruckus — that we no longer have to get that CAT5 wire from the wire closet to the router to each TV,” Hollie said. “All we have to do is get that wireless signal from that Ruckus base unit and transmit that to wherever the TV might be. It really opens it up to where we might have to be — the TV in a garage or bathroom or non-conventional places you don't have to worry getting a physical wire to.”

Consolidated offers three levels of IPTV service, including 240 standard and high-definition broadcast IPTV channels as well as advanced features, music channels, on-demand, and personalized and local content. The carrier has more than 300,000 access lines across its coverage area to support a triple play of video, digital voice and data services. Consolidated currently has more than 95,000 and 20,000 DSL and IPTV subscribers, respectively.

WIRELESS IPTV OPENS UP IN-HOME OPPORTUNITIES

Telecom service providers in the U.S. are just beginning to explore using Wi-Fi to deliver their IPTV services, but the service is attractive for more reasons than just a wire-free home. Wi-Fi is one of several standards, alongside ZigBee and Z-Wave, competing to be the de facto technology for the home network. If Wi-Fi does take hold as a way to deliver digital TV services, it could become a strategic tool for telcos to stake their claim in other areas of the home as well.

Beamformed Wi-Fi vendor Ruckus Wireless is in discussions with operators across the globe to offer its HomeSpot network as a means of extending public Wi-Fi footprints, potentially creating an enormous wide-area hotspot network without new construction. For example, a cable company or telco could offer its customers a free or discounted broadband connection and Wi-Fi router in their homes. In exchange, the service provider would broadcast out its own SSID from that Wi-Fi router, using it as a public hotspot. The two wireless networks remain separate, giving the customer privacy while allowing the carrier to build a hotspot footprint of thousands of new access points.

“They can do that quickly and cost-effectively because they already have a cable modem and cable services and broadband services going into subscribers everywhere,” said David Callisch, vice president of marketing for Ruckus. “So they are trying to leverage Wi-Fi to get more stickiness to the subscriber and to economically extend their network without having to do any huge capital expenditures — i.e., pulling fiber.”

Operators could do the same with small- or medium-sized businesses, getting a public hotspot in exchange for a discount on the business' broadband service. This would be especially relevant in a multiple storefront setting like a mall, Callisch said, and this business model is becoming prevalent today. “Now anyone who picks up a signal can attach to that, and if they are a subscriber, they can get services over that network,” he said. “Even if they aren't, they can just sign up.”

AT&T has been the most aggressive carrier with Wi-Fi, both in the home and in public. As a Ruckus customer, it is trialing Wi-Fi to distribute its U-verse IPTV service, although it hasn't yet explored the possibility of using that service to expand its footprint in the home. Consolidated Communications is the latest IPTV provider to use Ruckus Wireless' Wi-Fi technology for its TV distribution. J.J. Hollie, product manager for Consolidated's digital video services, said the Wi-Fi infrastructure used for video traverses a separate signal that comes direct from Consolidated. The operator is offering the upgrade to Wi-Fi IPTV and the Ruckus equipment free of charge to its consumers, but Jeff Heynen, senior research analyst with Infonetics, said this will not likely be the model to win out.

“Video notwithstanding, the Ruckus device just provides more bandwidth than your typical wireless router,” Heynen said. “[Telcos] can offer it and say this is a premium wireless offering within your home. You are going to get throughput that your neighbors aren't going to. Consumers will pay a premium for that.”

More opportunities lie in higher-speed hotspots, where carriers can really start to deliver some IP-based video content, Callisch said, adding that this is already occurring in Hong Kong. Heynen said that operators could easily add a broadband video component to their wireless IPTV service, much like the cable companies and now even telcos are doing with TV Everywhere. Considering that nearly everything has an Ethernet port on the back of it, Callisch said that one day carriers could also provide anything from closing the drapes to turning on the lights to managing heating systems and appliances.

“We've found that there are a lot of carriers with a renewed interest in Wi-Fi because it's so economical and pervasive,” Callisch said. “The thing that is overwhelming for carriers is that there are so many Wi-Fi-enabled devices, it has won the end-point battle. There are so many devices with Wi-Fi built in that they have to have a strategy.”
— Sarah Reedy