Gigabit wireless internet using millimeter wave technology, as promised by Starry, has long struggled with range and reliability
Super high-speed internet delivered over the air isn't as crazy as it sounds — This week, a new startup, Starry, announced it would bring gigabit-speed internet access …
Context & Ripple Effects
Starry, founded by Chet Kanojia, raised $30M in Series B funding on a pitch that sounds almost too good: gigabit internet delivered over the air with no trenching. The catch is physics — millimeter wave signals don't travel far or punch through obstacles well, which is why the same frequency band shows up elsewhere as a strictly short-range technology, like the WiGig standard the Wi-Fi Alliance certified for in-room use.
Starry isn't alone in chasing wireless gigabit. AT&T announced its own multi-gigabit scheme just months later, using shaped radio transmissions guided along power lines to dodge the range problem, while Alphabet's Project Taara bet on light beams spanning up to 20km. The pattern across all of them: every attempt to skip the wire runs into the same trade-off between distance and speed.
First-order effects
- Starry's short effective range forces dense rooftop-base-station builds, so its cost per household served rises sharply outside dense apartment markets even as subscribers inside coverage get gigabit speeds without waiting for fiber crews.
Second-order effects
- Incumbents respond with their own wireless-gigabit workarounds rather than matching Starry's architecture directly — AT&T's power-line-guided radio trials and light-beam projects like Taara attack the same range constraint from different directions.
Third-order effects
- If the range ceiling holds, fixed broadband splits structurally into two camps: short-range urban wireless that needs capital-intensive density, and long-haul alternatives like satellite (Starlink Premium, HughesNet's 100Mbps tier) that trade top speed for reach — leaving fiber as the only technology that escapes the trade-off entirely.
The trend: Broadband delivery is fragmenting into a contest of wireless workarounds — millimeter wave, guided radio, light beams, satellites — each buying speed by sacrificing range.