WASHINGTON, February 21, 2023 – Fixed wireless internet service provider Starry Group Holdings Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, according to a Monday filing in the bankruptcy court of Delaware.

The petition shows the company has roughly $310 million in total debt, but assets that amount to just $270 million. It also listed having between 5,000 and 10,000 lenders.

The group will now enter into a restructuring to pay back the debt.

“Over the last several months, we’ve taken steps to conserve capital and reduce costs in order to put Starry in the best position to explore various financing paths for the company,” Chet Kanojia, Starry’s CEO, said in a press release Tuesday. “Our next step in this journey is to continue to strengthen our balance sheet through a Chapter 11 restructuring process.

“With the support of our lenders, we feel confident in our ability to successfully exit this process as a stronger company, well-positioned to continue delivering an affordable, high-quality broadband experience to our customers,” Kanojia added.

“The Restructuring Support Agreement provides us with the funding needed to continue operating as normal, through this restructuring process and as we guide the company to profitability,” he continued. “We have a strong and experienced team in place and look forward to moving through this process quickly so that we can continue expanding essential broadband access and #HappyInterneting to more communities across the country.”

Last year the company said it would be defaulting on all its winning bids from $9.2 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund of the Federal Communications Commission, of which $268 million went to the fixed wireless company for connectivity in at least nine states.

Kanojia said last year that the company’s business model puts it in a position to compete against larger players.

LAS VEGAS, October 6, 2022 – By employing more fiber points, wireless internet service providers can improve network performance and innovation, industry players at the WISPAPALOOZA conference told Broadband Breakfast.

Jay Anderson, chief technology officer of FiberLight, which has built fiber networks in several states, including Texas, Florida, and Virginia, told this publication as wireless internet service providers get more subscribers online, the existing connections to the fiber backbone can get congested without more densification of fiber points.

“The only way to get that density is to get fiber out there, and that allows you to get more subs with your wireless,” Anderson said.

Anderson said he expects WISPs to adopt a “hybrid architecture” moving forward. FiberLight’s Texan WISP partners have grown “leaps and bounds,” he said. “They’re using our infrastructure…to get that capacity out there…our job is to get as much of it out there, [at as high a] bandwidth as possible,” he added.

Mike Rowell, senior vice president of operations for Hilliary Communications, related some of his own professional experience with fiber to Broadband Breakfast. Hilliary provides internet, telephone, and television service across Texas and Oklahoma.

“We can see fiber helping us out tremendously in some areas getting us to a wireless access point,” Rowell said, explaining that a single fiber deployment can replace a less-reliable, multi-device connection to a hard-to-serve area. He said this strategy enabled his company to offer higher internet speeds and reach new customers. 

Rowell has worked in telecommunications for four decades. He said he has seen once-prohibitive costs for fiber-installation machinery plummet, which makes fiber a far more viable option than it previously was.

“Fiber – from just…two years ago – was totally different than today,” he said. “You can [now] have fiber splicers that can do a really, really nice job for under $3,000.”

Rowell also emphasized the importance of foresight and innovative business planning. “We never thought we’d be selling one-gig, and here we are selling it,” he said. “It’s going to be the same thing: We don’t think we’re going to be selling 10-gig, but we’re going to.”

LAS VEGAS, October 4, 2022 – Several requirements for providers receiving funds from the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment program present significant difficulties for wireless internet service providers, said experts at the WISPAPALOOZA conference on Monday.

The BEAD program, administered by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, will allot $42.5 billion dollars to the states to promote broadband access. States will in turn issue awards from their allotted funds to “subgrantees” – such as wireless internet service providers – for broadband deployment and other projects.

“The biggest concern is the way that NTIA has defined ‘reliable broadband service’ to exclude locations that are served exclusively with unlicensed spectrum,” Stephen Coran, attorney in the broadband and communications practice group at Lerman Senter, told Broadband Breakfast Monday. “There’s nine million people who are getting broadband service that way. Many of them can’t get it any other way and the service is reliable.”

Areas covered solely by unlicensed spectrum are considered unserved by the NTIA. Carol Mattey, principal at Mattey Consulting LLC, told Broadband Breakfast Monday that although WISPs who operate such networks can apply for BEAD funding to alter their networks to meet the NTIA’s definition of “reliable broadband,” navigating BEAD’s complex regulatory framework will be difficult for many small providers.

“Most small providers don’t have the in-house staff or expertise to manage regulatory compliance,” she explained. “They’re…in the business of building networks. They don’t have people [who are] regulatory compliance experts.”

Mattey said small networks will have to adapt to overcome BEAD’s regulatory barriers. “They either have to acquire [regulatory-compliance] resources of share resources with others,” she said.

Possible financial hurdles

States or subgrantees must provide matching funds of at least 25 percent of each project’s cost. In addition, the NTIA’s notice of funding opportunity requires subgrantees to provide a letter of credit from a bank, totaling no less than 25 percent of the subgrantee’s award from the state.

Subgrantees receiving BEAD funding must also comply with Build America, Buy America provisions, which require construction material produced domestically make up at least 55 percent of total project cost – even if foreign sourcing would be cheaper. The NTIA is moving to waive some of these requirements for recipients of the NTIA’s $1-billion Middle Mile grant program.

Many subgrantees must also comply with the Davis-Bacon Act, which empowers the Department of Labor to set wage thresholds for contractors working on federally funded projects.