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Aereo Founder Launches 'Starry' Gigabit Wireless Service

While Aereo founder Chaitanya Kanojia failed to disrupt television, today he unveiled a new wireless broadband carrier he hopes will disrupt the cellular industry. At a New York launch event today Kanojia unveiled Starry, a new wireless ISP that promises to use millimeter wave technology to deliver gigabit wireless speeds to your home. The technology will lean heavily on mesh networked city nodes utilizing 38 GHz spectrum.

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Users will receive both a "Starry Point" antenna that sits outside of your window to connect to the city node, as well as a customized $350 router the company is calling a "Starry Station." The station comes with a touch-screen LED display that will offer an integrated speed test, a map of participating city nodes, and how many household devices are connected.

Kanojia isn't yet revealing pricing, but claims he'll offer pricing that's "orders of magnitude cheaper" than incumbent providers, with no usage caps. Yes, offering gigabit wireless at low prices with no caps does sound like wishful thinking. Konojia claims it's possible using "millimeter active phased array technology" and hundreds of scattered rooftop nodes throughout each city.

"With Starry's technology, we can deploy and scale faster than traditional wired networks -- at a fraction of the cost," Kanojia said in a prepared statement. "This is how the networks of the future will be built around the globe."

Interested users can reserve their spot in line until February 5th via the Starry website, after which the company says "Starry Station will be available for sale on Starry.com and pre-order on Amazon.com through Amazon Launchpad." Deliveries will begin in March, and Starry plans to unveil more than a dozen launch cities throughout the year after an initial Boston launch.

You'd like to think the service will work as well as Starry claims it will, with no pesky run ins with the Supreme Court this time around.

»youtu.be/r7YYAc9rq4g

Most recommended from 51 comments



Packeteers
Premium Member
join:2005-06-18
Forest Hills, NY
Asus RT-AC3100
(Software) Asuswrt-Merlin

2 edits

9 recommendations

Packeteers

Premium Member

my public wifi experiment

last summer i bought a flat unidirectional line of sight 2.4ghz wifi antenna and mounted it outside my window facing a city park. i setup a limited bandwidth guest network that left my internet only access wide open from 9am-6pm, then I ran an IP sniffer on my PC to see how many fresh local MAC:IP's my router's DHCP would assign.

tested it could deliver at least 5mbps down across a 300'x200' park filled with toddler parents and high school kid all using smartphones. I only got a dozen unique users over a 3 month period, and only 2 of them were regulars who used it weekly. my area has RCN TWCable and FiOS fighting over wired, and lots of roof cell stations.

What I learned from this is even if a meshnet was available, most people are already conditioned to use their home/office/coffeeshop/transportation wifi, and their digital cell plans everywhere else, so it may simply be too late for a commercial meshnet anywhere but the most ISP/Cell under served areas.

this summer 2016 i may try again - this time using an inline signal booster to see if more speed attracts more leeches

WHT
join:2010-03-26
Rosston, TX

6 recommendations

WHT

Member

Phased Array Overcomes NLOS

I call bullshit on this.

Phased array antennas have two advantages
Beam can steered for best signal.
Beam is concentrated allowing higher EIRP.

I'll have to review the FCC rules for emission limits up on 38 GHz, looking at the outdoor I'll make a rough guess it could be 100 Watts EIRP.

Regardless neither beam steering nor high power will overcome NLOS paths. Reflections from other buildings could work, but in very few locations.

morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000

6 recommendations

morbo

Member

Promising

Aereo Founder has some credibility. Here's hoping that the project isn't aborted due to regulatory or practical hurdles.
mikesco8
join:2006-02-17
Southwick, MA

2 edits

3 recommendations

mikesco8

Member

I hope this ends up panning out.

Fitting also that they are starting service in Boston since they got screwed so bad by Verizon. Question is are you willing to risk $350 to find out? Edit: I realize now the $350 is for a smart router that anyone can use and the antenna for the service will be offered later. Not sure how many people want to pay that much for a router though, even if it is smart unless you are getting their Internet service and it is required.

scott2020
join:2008-07-20
MO

2 recommendations

scott2020

Member

Great

Another broadband innovation that will ignore rural areas.
zod5000
join:2003-10-21
Victoria, BC

2 recommendations

zod5000

Member

I've often wondered it technology could bring us decent wireless broadband:

The biggest reason (I believe) we don't have a lot of broadband competition is the cost of building out the wired networks is insanely expensive. It makes its really expensive to enter the industry.

If someone figures how to offer a broadband experience via wireless, that could make it a lot cheaper for other countries to enter and compete. I'm all for it.
gaforces (banned)
United We Stand, Divided We Fall
join:2002-04-07
Santa Cruz, CA

2 edits

2 recommendations

gaforces (banned)

Member

Propriatary technology

Sounds like a closed private system which should be a public mesh network.
Did Starry buy access to this frequency?
XJakeX
join:2005-03-05
Coventry, RI

2 recommendations

XJakeX

Member

if this works...

It could be very bad news for the current crop of triple play providers - and buyers. Internet service costs very little to provide after the infrastructure is in place. It's why the cable and telcos can still offer the triple play for well under $100.00/month even in the face of ever increasing TV content costs. Internet service revenues subsidize these deals. Even if they are only temporary.

If people start deserting the traditional providers for Starry Internet, they will lose their cash cow and be less inclined to offer the cheap triple play. And if Starry holds to their "no caps" promise, these providers also lose that hammer they are soon planning to drop on cord cutters, in place of the "soft" caps there now. Can't wait to see how this develops.

tshirt
Premium Member
join:2004-07-11
Snohomish, WA

2 recommendations

tshirt

Premium Member

"but claims he'll offer pricing that's "orders of magnitude cheaper"

"orders of magnitude cheaper"
Simply Amazing! Ron Popeil couldn't hype it better then that
Starting with a $350 "modem/router"("Just 4 easy payments of $99.99" plus S&H) that doesn't even deliver anything out of the box.
And 38gHZ is going to need pretty good line of sight or walls as thin as tissue paper to avoid multi hundred hop routes in a high rise city.