New broadband player Starry looks to undercut broadband providers by disrupting infrastructure model
The founder of now defunct Aereo, Chet Kanojia, is looking to disrupt the home broadband market by offering gigabit service delivered over high-band millimeter wave spectrum.
Kanojia broke down the cost differential in an interview with TechCrunch: “It costs the cable guys around $2,500 per home to deal with the construction costs of laying down cable. And beyond cost, there are regulatory hurdles that slow down the process. We can deliver faster broadband with no regulatory wait time and it will cost us only $25 per home.”
Kanojia said the new service, which is claimed to deliver download speeds up to 1 Gbps, will be “orders of magnitude” less expensive than what’s currently on the market. Starry plans to deliver the service using “milimeter wave band active phased array technology” deployed in the unlicensed 38 GHz band. Three pieces of equipment are involved: the Starry Beam sits on a rooftop and beams broadband down to the Starry Point, which sits on the exterior of a home and is wired to the Starry Station router.
Kanojia’s previous Aereo venture was a startup that created thousands of tiny TV antennas no bigger than a fingertip, and users in New York City and a handful of other big cities could rent a connection to stream and record broadcast TV on their mobile devices and personal computers.
Aereo tried to position itself as an equipment provider and said viewers were paying rental fees to use its equipment. Last year, the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit said Aereo’s technology is basically like a DVR from the user’s perspective, and therefore does not break the law. The case went to the Supreme Court. Major broadcasters sued Aereo for copyright violation, and now those same broadcasters will have a chance to buy Aereo’s assets.
After filing for bankruptcy protection, in Dec. 2014 Aereo made plans to auction its antennas and other assets to broadcasters. According to Reuters, Aereo has reached a sales process agreement with CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox.
