There’s a new rival coming for Google Fibert, AT&T GigaPower, Verizon’s FiOS and other ultra-fast Internet services from providers such as Frontier and CenturyLink as well as cable providers.

Ultra-fast but pricey Internet packages face a threat from the founder of Aereo, whose first attempt to shake up the cable industry was quashed by the Supreme Court.

Starry will be a wireless service that, unlike cellphones, promises to be speedier than cable and designed for single locations such as homes and small businesses. The service is expected to launch in Boston this summer, with plans to expand to other U.S. cities and even internationally, though no time frame was given.

As for the Triangle getting Starry – it’s worth noting that Aereo did have Research Triangle Park on its list of markets for early deployment.

In announcing the project in New York on Wednesday, its founder, Chet Kanojia, decried the lack of competition in U.S. broadband.

The U.S. government has been calling for more competition in Internet service. At the speed level it defines as “broadband,” only about one-third of homes have a choice of Internet providers. The majority of American homes get their Internet from a cable company.

But it’s not yet clear whether people will actually save money with Starry. Although Kanojia wouldn’t say how much the service will cost, he suggested that his company is targeting a price of less than $80 a month for speeds faster than similarly priced cable offerings. Starry says its network is capable of speeds of up to 1 gigabit for downloads and uploads, which is comparable to newer deployments such as Google Fiber, and much faster than most cable customers get.

Comcast, the cable company in Boston, currently offers Internet service there for as low as $35 a month, but that rises to about $70 in two years. And as speeds go up, prices rise. In addition, many people spend far more than that, because the cable company pushes you to add TV and phone service, too.

Comcast declined comment.

What is Starry? A blog

Editor’s note: Starry posted the following blog about its new service:

We noticed a pattern. Almost every night around the same time, we were getting painfully slow connection speeds. We couldn’t stream movies. Video chat with our families. Download the latest game. Sync our work files. The only thing we could do was buffer.

What’s worse: We didn’t know how to fix it. Was it our Internet provider? Our devices? Too many neighbors online? Without knowing what the issue was, it was completely out of our control. And we realized that if this was happening to us, it was probably happening to a lot of other people too.

It was obvious that the in-home Internet experience needed a major overhaul. So we started Starry.

[How’s it work” Watch the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7YYAc9rq4g ]

Our ambition? Make the Internet better for everyone. Not exactly a walk in the park. But the more we learned, the clearer it became that a new approach had to emerge. According to the FCC, about 70% of Americans don’t have a choice when it comes to broadband Internet service providers, and about 20% don’t have access to broadband at all.

That lack of competition comes at a cost. Americans pay more for broadband service than people in any other country in the world. In places like Hong Kong and Paris, connection speeds are up to eight times faster than in New York.

In order to put the choice back into consumers’ hands, we had to completely reimagine the way Internet was delivered to the home.

So we went wireless.

We created the world’s first mmWave active phased array technology specifically for consumer Internet communications—the foundation for Starry Internet.

Traditionally people assumed that wireless gives you coverage but not throughput (or speed). Our technology not only proves this wrong, but it also allows us to bring better service to more people at a fraction of the price—and we do mean a fraction.

Today it costs roughly $2,500 per home to deploy traditional broadband service. With Starry Internet, it will cost about 1/100th of that.

But better service was just part of the equation. We also needed a better way to interact with Internet once it was in the home.

Enter Starry Station.

We experimented with hundreds of industrial designs before landing on one we loved; its sleek lines and iconic shape were a departure from anything we’d seen. Polluting it with blinking lights was out of the question. So we replaced those with something much easier to decipher: a touchscreen.

It was a bit of an uphill battle to convince ourselves that the touchscreen was the right choice, but we all agreed that our ability to deliver the user experience we envisioned depended on it. From tablets to cell phones, the touchscreen has become synonymous with ease of use. On Starry Station, it lets people

  • see and understand what’s happening with their Wi-Fi
  • set up their Wi-Fi directly from the device
  • interact simply with Android technology
  • recognize and fix any problems that arise
  • discover what speed they’re actually getting
  • monitor their kids’ time online with parental controls
  • find their username and password with one click
  • request a call from Starry Support
  • and a lot more.

Above all, we agreed it was a product we’d want in our homes for our families to use.

Together, Starry Internet and Starry Station are our first steps toward a better Internet experience for everyone—one that is more accessible, more affordable, more reliable, and less monopolized. This is a meaningful challenge for us, and we thank all our friends, investors, and supporters for their unwavering encouragement.

Here’s to the beginning of a new kind of Internet company. We hope you’ll join us on this journey.

Happy Interneting.

Read more at: https://starry.com/blog

Find out more about Starry at:

https://starry.com/internet

Starry will be a kind of fixed wireless, an Internet service that works well in some rural, flat areas. Kanojia says this technology is cheaper, per home, to build out than wired Internet. The company is adapting it to city life by using different kinds of spectrum, or airwaves, that it says haven’t been used like this commercially before. Cellphone companies are paying billions of dollars for spectrum, but Starry says the airwaves it’s using, called millimeter waves, is cheaper and available to lease and won’t have problems with congestion the way cellphone networks do.

But will it work?

“It’s a good theory. I’m sure it works in the lab, but when you get out in the real world, all sorts of crazy things that nobody thinks of happen when you get out there,” said Harold Feld, senior vice president of consumer advocate group Public Knowledge.

For example, Starry is putting antennas on top of buildings to beam the signal. Feld said wind gusts on top of buildings could knock antennas out of alignment.

Kanojia says customers can install Starry themselves. It requires a small window unit and a router inside the home. The company’s router, called Starry Station, will be available in March and retail for $350. It’ll be included with the Starry Internet service, but you could technically use another router. As a fancy router, Starry Station can be used with any Internet service.

Aereo, Kanojia’s previous startup, sought to offer over-the-air television channels through the Internet for a lower monthly fee than cable. Broadcasters successfully sued on copyright grounds, as Aereo wasn’t paying broadcasters as cable companies typically do. Kanojia said that he does not expect legal problems with Starry.