The CEO of Ruckus Wireless Inc. (NYSE: RKUS) is now expecting carrier deals to come in for the company's Wi-Fi and small-cell wireless gateway after its US$126 million IPO Friday.
CEO Selina Lo tells Light Reading Mobile that the company is expecting to nail down some deals for its recently introduced SmartCell gateway over the next few months. "They will be carrier opportunities, initially," Lo says.
The SmartCell Gateway 200 (SCG-200) is a small-cell gateway that sits between the Wi-Fi network and the mobile core and handles integration and management of the Wi-Fi access points and mobile network. It was nominated for a Leading Lights award in October.
SmartCell deals would help Ruckus continue to build on its work in the Wi-Fi offload space.
Among mobile carriers, Lo says that AT&T Inc. (NYSE: T) has been "most aggressive" in the home market in deploying Wi-Fi and will follow that up with 40,000 small cells by 2015. (See 4G in 2013: Not Just Speed, But Density Too.)
Lo also notes that cable companies have begun pushing much harder in Wi-Fi deployment, too. (See TW Cable's Wi-Fi Rolls With Ruckus .)
Ultimately, however, the big numbers for Wi-Fi haven't come from the U.S. "KDDI rolled out 120,000 [hotspots] in one year," Lo notes. (See Ruckus Makes Over KDDI With Wi-Fi Offload.)
The CEO says that she wishes the market conditions had been a little better for the company's US$126 million IPO. The company popped the champagne corks early Friday morning, California time, to celebrate the public offering that was 10 years in the making. But after starting trading at $15 a share, Ruckus's stock stands at $12.59 as of Wednesday morning. (See Photos: Ruckus's IPO Party.)
Still, Lo is generally positive. "Under the current market conditions, the fact that we have been able to garner investor interest is a validation of the market and Ruckus's leadership position in carrier Wi-Fi," she says.
— Dan Jones, Site Editor, Light Reading Mobile
