Starry Internet Cuts 500 Jobs, Half Its Workforce, and Cancels Big Expansion

Wireless home Internet provider Starry is cutting 500 employees, about half of its workforce, and canceling plans to expand into new states. Starry's board of directors yesterday approved the plan to cut 500 jobs, the Internet service provider said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing today. From a report: "The decision was based on cost-reduction initiatives intended to reduce operating expenses and allow the Company to focus on serving its existing core markets and customers," the filing said. Starry said the job cuts will be "substantially complete" by the end of December. Starry also announced a freeze on hiring and non-essential expenditures and withdrew full-year 2022 guidance that was previously given to investors. "This is an extremely difficult economic climate and capital environment, and at present we don't have the capital to fund our rapid growth. Because of that, we're focusing our energies on our core business: serving multi-tenant buildings in our existing dense urban markets," Starry CEO Chet Kanojia said in a press release.

The press release suggests the job cuts won't be the last major changes for Starry. The company said the cost-cutting plan will "conserve capital and improve its capital runway as it explores all strategic options." Starry launched in 2016. In mid-2019, Starry spent $48.5 million on 24 GHz spectrum licenses covering more than 25 million households in 25 states. "Combined with Starry's current deployment roadmap, Starry's fixed wireless footprint will reach more than 40 million households, covering more than 25 percent of all US households," the company said at the time.

Wifi 6E and mesh-nets like BATMAN w/urban ISPs.

[MIPSPro]

It's hard to believe these guys are struggling so much. I've always wanted a decent local wifi internet provider and the ones near me are horrible. The prices are high, their networks are woefully short of APs, etc... 802.11ax is so nice. If you haven't had a chance to play with it yet, I'd totally advise you to do it. The speed gains and latency is surprisingly good and noticeably better than any previous generation of wifi technology. I'm talking iperf-good, not CIO magazine-good. Also, the attenuation ma

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[belg4mit]

Last I checked they only wanted to deal with large multi-family buildings, significantly limiting their possible customers, especially in their own home market of Boston where smaller multifamily buildings are very common.

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[MIPSPro]

Wow, that's a pretty narrow business model. I guess it made sense to someone somewhere. I started off in the late 1990's as a Unix & Cisco guy running several small ISPs. I have thought more than once there is a gap in wifi ISPs. I can aim a yagi with best of them. I am also kinda curious if drones can carry APs these days for long enough to make operating them in fixed positions, launching drones to cover huge rural areas appeals to me, but I suspect it's not cost effective. Yet.

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[belg4mit]

I'm sure they'd like to grow into smaller buildings, and suggested as much when I asked. I guess larger buildings to maximize the bang per buck Re: customers vs. hardware installations, but then I'm not sure why they're founded in Boston and chose it as one of their starting markets... I guess because everyone hates Comcast?

Everyone hates Comast. Everyone.

[MIPSPro]

Yep. You got that right.

Footprint vs Customers

[chill]

Their wireless "footprint" covers 40,000,000 people. The article says they have 91,000 customers. That's a bit of an issue because wireless spectrum ain't cheap.

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[tlhIngan]

Their wireless "footprint" covers 40,000,000 people. The article says they have 91,000 customers. That's a bit of an issue because wireless spectrum ain't cheap.

It's point to point wireless which is far cheaper because while you can reach buildings of up to 40M people, you only install antennas a point to point repeaters as necessary. It goes from their main site to the roof of the building and provides service to that building .

Point to point wireless is considerably cheaper spectrum because you're not nee

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[chill]

In mid-2019, Starry spent $48.5 million on 24 GHz spectrum licenses covering more than 25 million households in 25 states.

Cheaper than the 5G spectrum auctions, but it still isn't pocket change.

When venture capital dries up

[gosso920]

They would not listen, they did not know how

Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry is one of the good ones!

[SpzToid]

Starry's core market is being one of the internet providers in large apartment buildings in dense neighborhoods like Downtown Washington DC. Trust me, having moved into one of the buildings, Starry beats competing offers from Comcast and Verizon on both price and bandwidth. I paid $50/monthly for a solid 300up/300down month-to-month subscription, installed.

Starry uses some kind of line-of-sight client/server beamed antennae, rather than underground cables used by Verizon and Comcast. If you live in a building like that and convince the building manager to offer Starry in the building by placing an antennae on the roof, Starry will give you free internet service for as long as you live there.

Starry stands out for being a US internet provider worth cheering for. Starry certainly sucks less than all other options!