Celeno secures $12 million in new funding

Israel-based Celeno Communications, a provider of semiconductors for WiFi home networking gateway devices, has closed a $12 million funding round.

Joining the latest funding round is international cable operator Liberty Global, which chose Celeno's WiFi technology as the engine for its multimedia home gateway.

Existing investors Cisco, Greylock Partners, Miven Venture Partners, and Pitango Venture Capital, also participated in the round.

Bruce Dines, vice president of technology investing for Liberty Global Ventures, said, "We were impressed with Celeno's technology and market leadership and believe that Celeno is well positioned to address the growing needs of the cable industry for high-quality, reliable WiFi solutions."

Liberty's endorsement of Celeno's WiFi silicon helps the overall case for WiFi home networking for home network video transmission. Although WiFi certainly has the obvious benefits to service providers of not having to run new wires or tap into existing power or coax, most service providers have favored wired approaches to carrying video over a home network because of concerns over potential interference issues.

Celeno claims to have overcome interference issue with its OptimizAIRTM technology suite, which leverages various techniques, including Beam Forming MIMO, Channel Aware Transmission Shaping, and Channel Aware Packet Scheduling. The combination of these three technologies, say Celeno, help improve range, coverage and throughput required to transmit video around a home.

For more:
- see the release

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