Ruckus Enters Broadband Market

Ruckus Wireless launches outdoor infrastructure for wireless broadband: Ruckus must like what Meraki has been up to, as the wireless firm has launched its own ecosystem for inexpensive, Wi-Fi based wireless broadband. The company has some remarkable international commitments to use the technology.

From where I sit, Wi-Fi-based broadband is a developing world and also-ran approach where either cellular or WiMax equipment isn't available or is too expensive. Wi-Fi emerged in the mid-oughties (2004-2007) as an option because it was an interim measure: a way to get faster speeds than cellular and often that most of the installed wireline broadband before those technologies had matured.

With an LTE and WiMax roadmap in the US and LTE in Europe, along with widely available WiMax gear for the quasi-licensed 3.5 GHz band in the US (for generally secondary markets), and vastly improved cable, DSL, and fiber rates across a good hunk of the installed broadband base, it's hard to see how broadband Wi-Fi carves out a niche where it can be cheaper, better, and ubiquitous.

However, there are 5 billion people in markets in which that's not going to be the case, and all research shows that those folks are heavy metered mobile data consumers where they can afford it. Layering broadband Wi-Fi on a best effort ability into areas where there's no reasonable or well-priced second choice could be a winning strategy.

Gruff Rhys presents Separado!Longmont, Colo., Battle Reminder of Old Muni-Fi War