- Starry is a fixed wireless access (FWA) pioneer, developing its equipment in-house using mmWave spectrum
- The company crashed after raising only about half the capital it needed in a SPAC-sponsored IPO
- After emerging from Chapter 11, CEO Alex Moulle-Berteaux said the now-private company expects to reach profitability by the end of this year or early next
Like a phoenix, Starry is on the rise again. The fixed wireless ISP that took the world by storm a few short years ago – before declaring bankruptcy in 2023 – is up to its old tricks again, albeit on a much smaller scale.
By “old tricks,” we’re referring to Starry’s mission to woo consumers with the prospect of breaking free of Big Internet at prices much cheaper than the typical ISP. As for “smaller scale,” Starry’s headcount was 1,100 around the height of its heyday and it’s now below 250. Ouch.
Besides climbing out of bankruptcy, much of the past year has been focused on upgrading its hardware and software to offer gigabit speeds (1,000 Mbps). The Gig service isn’t yet available everywhere in its service territory, but that’s where they’re headed, CEO Alex Moulle-Berteaux told Fierce.
The company had hoped to reach profitability earlier, but it now looks like it will achieve that goal by the end of this year or early next, he said. Part of that strategy involves the staff cuts, as well as creating the Gig service, enabling Starry to offer speedier and higher-priced tiers throughout more of its network. It’s also launching a commercial broadband service for enterprise and small and medium businesses.
Those efforts are driving revenue up about 35% year over year, allowing it to flip from a cash-burning business to one that’s nearing profitability.
Returning to the private sector helps.
“All these things are hard to do, hard to do well, and doing them as a private company has been a lot better for everyone,” Moulle-Berteaux said.
Expansion plans on hold
Starry exited the Columbus, Ohio, market after its bankruptcy and now offers service in just five markets: Boston, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, and Washington, D.C.
Moving beyond those markets is possible but there are no immediate plans to do so.
“I definitely think of that as where we’re going long term, but we’re an incredibly practical and an incredibly focused company now for the right reasons,” he said. “Bankruptcy restructuring is a very sobering process.”
For now, “we’re focused on driving profitable growth” and any talk of expansion will need to wait.
The operator competes with cable about 80% of the time, Moulle-Berteaux noted. Its no-contract service caters to multi-dwelling units (MDUs) of 10 units or more, which are often populated by millennials.
Part of what enables Starry to compete on affordability is its proprietary 802.11-based technology, which is what Wi-Fi uses. It’s not the same 3GPP-defined service that the big mobile carriers are using to offer fixed wireless access (FWA).
That said, Moulle-Berteaux said Starry hears a lot about the FWA from mobile carriers and they see the impact it’s having on the industry. But Starry isn’t seeing mobile carriers in its footprint so much since the big carriers concentrate on areas where they have fallow capacity, which tend to be in less dense environments.
Of course, the demise of the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) affected Starry, but more than two-thirds of customers opted to stay with Starry, which is offering discounts to keep them connected, he said.
AI in beta
Because Starry pioneered its own hardware and software systems, it’s also been quick on the draw with artificial intelligence (AI), with coders on staff for the last 12-14 months or so.
“This is a huge area for us,” he said, with beta versions already in place to see how AI can improve its processes in several areas.
“It’s an area we jumped on pretty quickly because as a small company, we had to look for all kinds of ways to build efficiency and see where we could get an edge,” he said.
“We’re looking at revenue management. We’re looking at customer management and we’re looking at network management” as the three big areas where it hired in-house developers to work on AI.
Spectrum sale?
Starry is operating in all five cities using the 37 GHz spectrum band. In Columbus, Ohio, it had launched using 24 GHz, but it’s no longer using that spectrum.
Starry still owns 24 GHz licenses in about 58 partial economic areas (PEAs,) including Columbus and other cities like Cleveland, Ohio, and Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada. It's possible that it would sell those spectrum licenses if the right buyer comes around.
“We’re looking at all kinds of opportunities and there’s been inbound interest for it,” he said. “We’re very open minded.”
Forging ahead
Even post-bankruptcy, Starry's team still includes many of the company's co-founders. “There’s still a lot of belief for what we set out to do,” he said.
Starry co-founder Chet Kanojia was the founder of Aereo, which sought to upend the TV industry until the U.S. Supreme Court sided with broadcasters and shot it down. Kanojia served as CEO of Starry from 2015 to 2023, overseeing initial research and development phases of the company.
Kanojia sits on the board and remains actively engaged with the company, Moulle-Berteaux said.
“I still believe we’re a very disruptive force for the industry,” Moulle-Berteaux said. “Over half the households in the U.S. don’t have more than one choice in telco, so I think that choice and competition is good for consumers. It helps people have more value in the services that they choose.”