HOUSTON, May 8, 2023 – Fixed wireless provides some advantages over fiber to the premises for multi-dwelling unit owners and home owners, said panel including wireless providers at a Broadband Communities Summit event on Thursday.

Property owners do not want to deal with the construction costs and inconveniences of bringing fiber to the premises, said Christopher Curtin, vice president of MDU expansion at internet service provider Ubiquity. Often, bringing fiber to the home requires drilling holes and disrupting living spaces in order to lay the wires.

Instead, companies should leverage the existing infrastructure to build fixed wireless connections where possible, he said. Doing so reduces the likelihood of overbuilding as fixed wireless can rely on the infrastructure already existing in the community, continued Curtin.

Certainly there is merit to building new wires in some cases, said Pat Garry of Astound Broadband, but carriers can optimize time and resources by taking advantage of what structures are already in place.

Fiber is not required for consumers to receive the same high-quality experience as other internet users, added Pierre Trudeau of the telecommunication solutions product developer Positron Access Solutions.

This is particularly true for people that qualify for the Affordable Connectivity Program which supplements broadband access for qualifying low-income households, said Nick Laird of Verizon, the director of sales and marketing for the internet service provider.

Fixed wireless does not require that installers drill holes or enter property, which can lower the barriers to adoption for low-income families. “With a lot of ACP properties, [fixed wireless] is a support pillar,” said Laird.

Our goal as fixed wireless providers is to go into the community and help residents understand what connectivity solutions make sense for them, agreed panelists. Fixed wireless is often the solution for these communities, said Laird.

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.”