Shoot for the Stars
Starry Simplifies Joining the World of Broadband
By Cathy Applefeld Olson
At Boston-based Starry, the commitment to digital equity is woven into the company’s ethos and shines in its work with underserved communities in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Denver and D.C. Since launching its first network in 2018, Starry now reaches more than 87,000 public and affordable housing units.
“Everyone has the ACP. As we were getting off the ground what was important for us was to understand how those incomes were being received in the underserved communities we were targeting, and how we could create our own low-cost program,” says Virginia Lam Abrams, who heads Starry’s communications and digital equity program. “We spoke to people at HUD and other affordable housing providers, and a few things stood out about why these programs weren’t being used as much as they could.”
Among the issues the team discovered: Some speeds offered in lower-cost plans weren’t meeting the federal definition of broadband, which is download speeds of at least 25 Mbps and upload speeds of at least 3 Mbps. “They were just deficient,” Lam Abrams says. And all of the plans required an eligibility component. “Some required that you go through a federal credit check, some required an equipment deposit. It was just a long application process.”
Enter Starry Connect, which Lam Abrams describes as “a low-barrier way for individuals to take advantage of a program without having to jump through hoops. We partner directly with public and affordable housing communities to make our program available across the entire community.”
Residents who live in housing provided by Starry Connects community partners automatically qualify for the program and pay a flat monthly rate. “A lot of times they don’t even know they’re signing up for a ‘low-cost’ plan because it’s just presented as a plan for sign up,” she notes.
Last February, Starry Connect welcomed its ninth partner, the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles’ Avalon Gardens. “Many people are still working and learning from home, and it’s important that we make digital inclusion a priority,” says HACLA president/CEO Doug Guthrie.
“There are a lot of trust issues in these communities, with vendors in general, and being able to build that trust from the get-go—with everyone from the poverty level to leadership of the organization that owns the property—has been really important,” Lam Abrams says.
The next step is putting in the work. “We go into the community, hold face-to-face tabling events, have a Starry rep on site to explain our service and benefits like ACP. Having that regular engagement is really important. A lot of times a Starry representative is a friendly face in the community. They recognize our reps; a lot of them are on a first-name basis.”
Starry teams have hosted four holiday food drives in L.A. and NYC; created a community lending library in New Jersey; orchestrated coat and school supply drives; and planted community gardens. A recent Starry-sponsored scholarship dinner for residents at Spring Creek Towers in Brooklyn, NY—one of the largest HUD-supported communities in the country—also included gifting the scholarship recipients with tablets, part of its collaboration with Microsoft’s Airband Initiative.
“It all stems from identifying what are the needs in these communities beyond broadband,” she says. “And how can we fill those needs while we’re still talking about broadband.”