After Aereo's Collapse, Founder Hopes To Disrupt Wireless Broadband Market With 'Starry'
from the good-luck-out-there dept
You'll of course recall that Aereo founder Chaitanya Kanojia's attempt to disrupt the TV industry ran face-first into an army of broadcaster lawyers and a notably ugly ruling by the Supreme Court. Undaunted, Kanojia has returned with a new plan to try and disrupt the frequently pricey wireless broadband industry. Kanojia's trying to do this via a new startup named "Starry," unveiled at a launch event this week in New York. Starry is promising to offer users uncapped, gigabit speeds at prices less than most people pay their incumbent broadband provider.Kanojia claims that the service will deliver this ultra-fast connectivity via what it's calling the country's "first millimeter active phased array technology." FCC documents suggest that Starry will utilize spectrum in the 38 GHz band to deliver broadband to urban areas via hundreds of rooftop nodes scattered around the city. Users are given both a "Starry Point" antenna that sits outside their window, and need to buy a fancy $350 router called a "Starry Station" to connect to their various Wi-Fi devices. Kanojia tells TechCrunch that the technology will only cost around $25 per home to deploy:
"It costs the cable guys around $2,500 per home to deal with the construction costs of laying down cable,” said Kanojia on a phone call, setting the scene for his next big unveil. “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 won’t disclose pricing but says that the service will offer various tiers based on speed (up to 1GB up and down) and that it will be “orders of magnitude cheaper” than current broadband providers like Comcast and Time Warner Cable."The catch? One, nobody really knows specifically how well Starry's phased array technology is going to work (especially in regards to line of sight), and Starry isn't offering much hard technical detail right now beyond a YouTube video. If it does work, millimeter wave technology will still require the deployment of hundreds if not thousands of nodes across a city, distance limitations restricting its use to only denser urban areas. The broadband landscape is littered with the corpses of thousands of urban WISPs, which still rely on incumbent bandwidth, and still require slow, cumbersome deployment of a sizable amount of gear.
And while real-world disruption of national incumbents will probably be minimal, it's still refreshing and absolutely necessary to see somebody try (and fortunately there's spectrum available to try with). According to Starry, users can pre-order the self-install kits at the Starry website, after which they'll be made available at Amazon and other retailers. The service will launch first in Boston in March. Variety got wind of the fact that around fifteen cities should be unveiled as launch markets sometime this year, including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Washington D.C., Seattle and Denver.
And while nobody actually knows whether Starry will really work, with no real regulatory or legal hurdles in its path, Kanojia's latest attempt at disruption -- at the very least -- shouldn't wind up face down and unconscious at the Supreme Court.
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Filed Under: competition, open spectrum, spectrum, wireless
Companies: aereo, starry
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Slower than fast.
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Re:
think distributed/individual-based, 'mesh' networking is a pretty cool idea, if not the ultimate in small dee democracy in action...
if i recall, wasn't just a urban-friendly method, but actually more popular in rural areas; the line-of-sight thing being one of the main issues...
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Just like with court entities such as Prenda, it starts slow and small. But ever increasing numbers eventually find a way to establish themselves with a foot hold and after that it is Katy bar the door.
Google kicked all this off with gigabyte connections. Others are trying to move into the vacuum that the major telcos created. It is now a matter of time before they actually have some sort of competition, be it ever so small to start with. It's long over due.
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Disruptive indeed
http://www.wired.com/1999/12/winstar/
Anyway, a little poking around makes it clear that much of that frequency band is a licensed band, and was auctioned as early as the year 2000. Not sure if Starry has licenses or how they are planning to use that band without having to license every installation.
The other part is the question of roof top transmitters. Generally such a transmitter would require FCC approval and licensing, and also local building code approval for ac commercial undertaking. It might even be that this sort of repeater / distribution node network wouldn't be permitted on residential properties.
The concept of the technology is interesting, but unless it has good range it end up as a "city" solution, which doesn't at all address the largest group of people without high speed internet connections, which are rural. It may or may not be a workable idea, but it may be more limited than everyone would like.
It seems like a variation on WiGig... proprietary routers and such seem like such a bad idea.
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Re: Disruptive indeed
If the same antenna is used to relay and receive, this would apply to a mesh network. If a separate antenna is used to relay the signal, then that antenna can be regulated.
It doesn't apply to the base stations however. But those are likely attach to existing towers or commercial buildings and no one will care.
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Re: Re: Disruptive indeed
You also have to remember that at that frequency range, you are looking at things that are pretty much line of sight, and usually quite directional. It will be interesting to see how they overcome these issues, not in theory but in practical application.
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Re: Re: Re: Disruptive indeed
The problem is of course the base stations, which are providing internet service only, so the rules don't apply and you have to get approvals.
I've looked into using either ubiquiti or mamosa systems to set up a small WISP. My plan would be to buy a townhouse on a ridge nearby, use it as a repeater, and rent it out. I could use a single antenna as a repeater and effectively cut the bandwidth in half, or I could hide the repeater antenna behind the attic vent which is likely made of MDF or plastic and wouldn't block too much of the signal.
From the vantage point, the repeater would have line of sight to my house and also to about a dozen data centers. I'm guessing I could get cheap bandwidth and some roof space at at least one of the data centers. Mamosa's tools say I would get about 1.2Gbps using their radios. I'm guessing if I get about 6 people to split that, at $100/pp I would about break even and I could handle up to about 40 people and everyone would be able to stream a netflix UHD video at once. However, this model has problems scaling because of the roughly 40 people per backhaul limit.
I've even got the bank to give me a tentative okay to purchase a townhouse. The problem is I don't want to be in the WISP business and if someone else is going to do it within the next few years, I'd rather just wait.
BTW, I think there is likely a market for sector antennas painted to look like shutters. You could place them on houses and since from a distance, you couldn't tell they were there, they would be easy to get approved.
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Re: Re: Re: Disruptive indeed
Bull. Locals have no authority to override the FCC, even for commercial use.
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Three letters, miles of red tape
No real regulatory or legal hurdles yet.
Guaranteed, if it starts to look like it'll pose a real problem to the current ISP's they'll be tripping over themselves to beg the government to introduce 'necessary regulations', all to 'protect the consumers' of course, and not so incidentally make it too expensive for the service to operate.
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It's also why few want to do anything rural, as the cost per hookup goes up (longer connection cabling and more signal boosters / repeaters / etc) and the income does not. It's much easier in many ways to do what Google Fiber is doing, select an area based on demand and good demographics, concentrate in a very small overall area, and try to get the most people in that area signed up. It's still frighteningly expensive, but at least they are trying!
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Long term profits. Once the network is deployed you have plenty of time to recoup the costs. As for boosters and repeaters fiber should help reducing the need for those. Google would succeed anywhere they go, the demand is there.
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Mimosa's products will ship next month
http://mimosa.co/c5i.html
The Mimosa A5-360 is the equivalent of the Starry Beam.
http://www.mimosa.co/home/Products/Access-Point/A5-360.html
Both systems will start shipping in high volume in February 2016.
Mimosa is accepting online pre-orders for both right now: http://mimosa.co/preorder.html
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Disruption Has A Short Life Expectancy
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Re: Disruption Has A Short Life Expectancy
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OTARD rule
https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
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Connecting to the wider Internet
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