Starry Internet

Starry, Inc. was publicly announced in January 2016 by Chaitanya "Chet" Kanojia, who had previously founded Aereo.[2] As of December 2017, it was providing commercial service to a limited number of apartment buildings in the Boston area for $50/month per apartment, promising 200Mbit/s upload and download speeds.[3] As of December 2016, Starry was based in Boston, had about 100 employees,[4] and had raised $63 million of funding.[5] Kanojia claims that Starry's capital cost will be only $25 per home, as compared to $2,500 for cable.[6] Starry announced on July 1st, 2019 that through an FCC spectrum auction, they acquired 104 licenses for 24 GHz millimeter-wave spectrum to cover 51 markets in 25 states.[7]

Starry's system operates on the 38.2 GHz and 38.6 GHz bands, connecting its base stations ("Starry Beam") to receivers on individual buildings ("Starry Points"). Each base station covers a radius of 1.5 km. Signal propagation is near line-of-sight, not penetrating buildings and windows, and is degraded by foliage or rain, so Starry directs its signal using Multi-user MIMO phased array antennas, and can take advantage of reflections.[4] The base station redistributes its signal within a building using Starry's own Wi-Fi router ("Starry Station").[6]

Analysts are mixed about Starry's prospects. Some point to the failure of Clearwire (which operated WiMax on the 2.5 GHz band),[8] or to technical challenges: "The physics are tough to overcome, and technology has been slow to improve here."[9] Others note that if the expected low fixed costs per user are achieved, "they could profitably offer competitive broadband speeds for a fraction of the current price of wired broadband".[1]

• Official website