Ruckus Wireless announces that Portugal Telecom has selected and is now offering the Ruckus MediaFlex "Smart Wi-Fi" system as the wireless standard for IPTV distribution to over three million Portuguese households.

Smart Wi-Fi is a patented and incredible technical advance that enables delay-sensitive traffic, such as streaming digital IP-based video or voice, to be reliably transmitted over standard 802.11 frequencies using sophisticated Wi-Fi best path selection and interference avoidance techniques.

Since its introduction only 18 months ago, the Ruckus MediaFlex NG has become the de facto Wi-Fi standard for in-home multimedia distribution by broadband operators and incumbent telecom providers around the world in countries such as the United States, Hong Kong, Belgium, Singapore, Chile, Italy, Ireland, Czech Republic, Finland, Estonia, Slovenia and now Portugal.

Available immediately, the Ruckus MediaFlex Wi-Fi system now gives Portuguese consumers the freedom to watch television, as well as other interactive video content, where and when they desire, eliminating the need to run disruptive, costly and unsightly cabling throughout the home.

Portugal Telecom currently provides high-speed Internet service to more than 700,000 broadband subscribers and is installing more than 200 IPTV customers every day. According to the company, 50 percent of all IPTV installations now use the Smart Wi-Fi option because consumers like the speed of installation, reliability, non-disruptive operation and freedom to place televisions anywhere and easily move them around the home without cabling or re-wiring.

"When given a choice between wires and no wires, all things being equal, consumers want wireless," said Luis Lamela, director of IPTV services for Portugal Telecom. "Until now, the perception has been that nothing beats a wire for reliability. Ruckus Wireless has forever changed this notion."

Lamela noted that with the Ruckus MediaFlex solution, a single technician can install the IPTV service in under 20 minutes compared to almost two hours for an alternative wired solution. "Conventional wisdom assumes consumers only care about cost and not about how triple play services are distributed around the house. This is simply not true. When it comes to their homes, consumers have strong opinions about what is put into their homes. They want something that is quick and easy to install, flexible to move around, reliable in every imaginable configuration and simple to use. The Ruckus MediaFlex delivers on all these requirements," Lamela concluded.

According to Portugal Telecom, while consumers are generally agnostic about the technology used to deliver television into the home, IPTV enables "a better TV experience" with the ability to offer more robust video on demand services, greater interactivity and more flexible and aggressive pricing and packaging. Portugal Telecom also offers satellite and cable TV services.

Portugal Telecom makes use of technical advances in data compression to deliver the maximum quantity and quality of IPTV content available anywhere in the world.

Over a 16 Mbps ADSL 2+ broadband connection into subscriber homes, Portugal Telecom offers customers both standard and high definition multicast IPTV content using H.264 compression. Using this advanced technology allows a single stream of HD content to be squeezed into the home using as little as 8 Mbps of bandwidth, and standard definition IPTV streams to be delivered at a data rate of less then 3 Mbps.

For euro 54.90 a month, consumers receive 30 fixed channels, 12 a la carte channels and access to more than 700 video on demand titles. All the gear needed to enable IPTV in the home, including Ruckus MediaFlex routers and adapters, Cisco (Scientific Atlanta) IP set-top-boxes and broadband gateways, are rented as a bundle for only euro 5 a month.