Starry Internet just announced the start of its national expansion with new service in Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
Millions of cord-cutters have abandoned cable TV, but they are still stuck with cable internet. Boston-area startup Starry wants cord-cutters to have another choice.
Starry Internet beams data wirelessly to and from your house at 200Mbps (megabits per second)… for just $50 per month. Boston was the first market to get Starry in 2016. Now the company is extending its service to Los Angeles and Washington, DC.
The company plans to ramp up quickly in 2018 with deployments in New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Denver, Seattle, Detroit, Atlanta, Indianapolis, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, and Minneapolis.
Aereo’s Gone, but the Fight Goes On
Starry’s founder, Chet Kanojia, is the same entrepreneur who took on the cable industry with Aereo. Aereo went bankrupt because of lawsuits, but Starry is on a much stronger footing.
Kanojia plans to take on Big Cable by being a different kind of internet company. Take, for example, his stance on net neutrality:
“Better internet also means that our customers get the full and open internet and nothing less…. We treat all traffic equally, because a free and open internet has been the single biggest driver of innovation over the last generation.”
Starry’s low-cost strategy hits cable where it hurts. It gives people what they need (fast internet speeds) without the things they hate about cable (throttles and hidden fees). Could a new type of cord-cutting be about to sweep America?
Chris Casper is a former tech industry product manager who escaped from California for New Mexico. Now he writes about science and tech while searching for the perfect green chile sauce.
