Aereo founder takes on ISPs with millimeter wave wireless internet

Aereo dared to take on the broadcast industry by streaming over-the-air TV channels on the internet — that is, until the Supreme Court ruled that its technology was illegal. Now that company’s founder, Chet Kanojia, is taking on yet another established industry: Internet service providers. Today at a New York City launch event he unveiled Starry, the first company to use millimeter wave technology to deliver wireless internet access. He claims Starry’s network will be able to deliver gigabit speeds to homes wirelessly for far less than traditional broadband, and there also won’t be any data caps. It will start beta testing its network around Boston this summer.

To spread its network, the company has developed small active phase array devices that can be deployed pretty much anywhere. There’s no need for huge cellular towers. And to access it at home, you use a small device that sits right outside your window, like a tiny over-the-air TV antenna.

“People have historically assumed fiber is the answer at all times,” said Kanojia, who agreed fiber would be a great solution for future broadband rollouts if it was government sponsored. But without that, he believes Starry’s technology is the best way to deploy scalable broadband to consumers.

Starry is targeting both cellular providers and traditional ISPs. During the launch event, Kanojia listed some familiar stats: 70 percent of Americans have no choice when it comes to their home ISP, while 20 percent don’t have any access to broadband at all. Meanwhile in cellular land, there’s plenty of competition, but pricing and data caps aren’t feasible for dedicated home internet. By relying on high-frequency millimeter radio waves, Starry is able to deploy its network to far more easily than wired broadband providers and offer access at a much lower cost than wireless carriers.

The company plans to roll out a suite of products to connect to its future wireless network, all of which you’ll be able to install on your own. There weren’t any details about those potential products, but the company did announce a stylish new touchscreen WiFi router, dubbed the Starry Station. Its pyramid-like design is a huge departure from typical router design (which Kanojia described as being like upside-down dead spiders), and it’ll also give you details about your internet’s health.

Starry Station offers 802.11ac WiFI as well as 802.15 support for Internet of Things products. You can order it for $350 on Starry’s site and Amazon, and the company plans to start shipping it in March. There’s also a WiFi extender, Starry Wing, planned for this summer.

Developing… ​

[Photo credit: Jin Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images]

Starry’s Station aims to be the smartest, prettiest WiFi router around

Starry founder Chet Kanojia seems intent on changing how people get their internet service like he did with Aereo and television. While the beta launch of the startup’s millimeter-wave wireless service won’t happen until this summer, people will be able to get the first taste of the Starry formula — a WiFi router called the Starry Station — much sooner than that. Like Google’s OnHub, the $349 Starry Station is meant to give regular people a simpler, sleeker, more reliable way to set-up and manage their Wi-Fi networks, but it also packs a handful of curious extras.

Before we go any further, know this — the Starry Station is not the bit of hardware you’ll need to link up to the company’s new, fixed-wireless broadband network. Once the service launches, customers will get an antenna called a “Starry Point” that connects to any existing router.

The Station is a totally separate deal, one the company describes as a “hub” that allows users to check on the health of all their WiFi connections. A bubbly (some would say “friendly”) interface gives your overall network health a score based on WAN and LAN issues, and parts of a network map will turn red if things get sketchy. You’ll be using the 3.8-inch touchscreen display to dig into all those details, and — perhaps thankfully — Ookla’s Speed Check service is baked right into the router, as is the ability to set parental controls and set up guest networks.

More importantly, the Station was designed for sheer networking ease-of-use, a problem we’ve seen bigger players tackle with varying degrees of success. One touch, for instance, is all it takes to coax the router into displaying your network name and password. And a proximity sensor on the station can tell when you waddle over so it knows to display, health score, current internet speed, and the number of devices connected. Starry’s edge over the competition might come from its stance on future-proofing, as evidenced by what’s inside the glossy white wedge. The Station’s wireless radio plays nice with standard 802.11ac networks, but also packs support for future implementations of the 802.15 standard for Internet-of-Things devices.

Kanojia and his crew are still unveiling Starry at an event in New York, so we’ll have more as the situation develops. Eventually, he’ll mention that you can reserve a Starry Station until February 5th, and that the first units will start shipping this March.

Devindra Hardawar contributed to this report.