The venture capital arms of Motorola Inc. and Microsoft are investing in a $16 million round of funding for Deutsche Telekom AG, a maker of Wi-Fi routers designed to beam TV and other media around the home.

The new financing announced Monday increases the total investment in Ruckus, led by noted Silicon Valley executive Selina Lo, to $30 million since its founding in June 2004.

The proceeds will be used to expand production and marketing for the company's MediaFlex wireless router, which seeks to address shortcomings in standard Wi-Fi equipment that make it hard to transmit live TV and radio.

The MediaFlex router, priced at $159, has been offered to consumers by 77 companies, most of them rural telephone companies that deliver video signals to homes using the technology known as IPTV, short for Internet Protocol TV. The router is plugged into a set-top box provided by the phone company. The router then beams the signal to a laptop or desktop computer with Wi-Fi capabilities. A TV in another room also can pick up the signal using a $100 receiver.

Ruckus, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has sold "tens of thousands" of MediaFlex routers since launching the product a year ago, said David Callisch, director of marketing for Ruckus.

"We found Ruckus Wireless to be the only solution provider to have truly addressed the problem of moving multimedia around the home without new wiring," Petra Buchholz, fund manager for T-Online Venture Fund, a unit of Deutsche Telekom, said in a statement.

While the most common flavors of Wi-Fi -- known as 802.11b, 802.11g and 802.11a -- have become a leading method for beaming an Internet connection around a home or office, they are best for applications like Web browsing or checking e-mail, which don't depend on having the data arrive in a steady stream.

When such content is transmitted by a Wi-Fi signal, some data can be delayed by interference from cordless phones and microwave ovens or even treadmills and hair dryers. Such delays, though they might test the user's patience, are resolved by waiting for all the necessary packets to arrive. Audio and video, however, need to arrive in a steady stream to avoid stutters or worse in the image or sound.

Some companies are planning to attack this problem by using a version of Wi-Fi called 802.11n that is still being finalized.

Last month, Apple Computer Inc. announced plans to introduce a slim set-top box dubbed iTV that will allow consumers to beam movies purchased online or video stored on a computer to a television. Apple has declined to say what wireless technology it will use. Callisch said Monday that Apple "has looked at our stuff" but will likely use 802.11n for iTV.

By contrast, the MediaFlex router is based on the current generation of Wi-Fi technologies but uses a multidirectional antenna to monitor different wireless paths for potential interference, switching to another route when static is detected. Ruckus considers that an advantage because most laptops in use today are already equipped to receive these signals, unlike 802.11n.

Lo, Ruckus' CEO, may be best known as a marketing executive for Alteon WebSystems, a network equipment supplier acquired by Nortel Networks Corp. for $7.8 billion in 2000. Her career also includes roles at Bay Networks, also later acquired by Nortel, as well as Hewlett-Packard Co.

Besides Motorola Ventures and T-Online, contributors to the latest round of funding included Firelake Capital Management and other private investors. The new corporate investors join existing Ruckus investors such as Sequoia Capital, Sutter Hill Ventures, Investor AB and WK Technology Fund.