Coaxsys announced this week that it has landed its 20th telco customer just a few months after it first launched its TVnet product.

The Los Gatos, Calif.-based vendor said Panhandle Telephone, a 14,000-line independent telco in northwest Oklahoma, will use Coaxsys' IPTV 7000 unit to deploy IP video. The product uses proprietary technology and allows carriers to use a residential customer's existing coaxial infrastructure to transmit IP video around the home.

The device is quickly gaining the acceptance of smaller carriers as an alternative to carriers running cat 5 wiring from the side of the home to multiple TVs. TVnet delivers up to 104 Mbps transfer rate and supports distances up to 250 feet.

"We are trialing with a large international carrier, but our customers right now are probably fewer than 100,000 subscribers," said Michael D'Addio, CEO of Coaxsys.

The company also is winning over some larger system vendors who are incorporating Coaxsys' technology into residential gateways and other network interface devices. In fact, as the company begins to sell to larger carriers, those customers are demanding more of an integrated product, D'Addio said. At the same time, the technology is helping cut significant labor costs out of typical telco video deployments.

"For the most part, the benefit of not having to rewire the house throws them over the top," D'Addio said.

In one recent study, carriers that ran cat 5 wire to the set-top had technicians spend an average of 4 hours per install. Using the existing coax cut that time to under an hour, according to Ted Archer, director of marketing for Coaxsys.