Cartesian works with many players on BEAD projects

Cartesian is a Boston-based consulting firm that has become a familiar name in the telecommunications world. It’s working with the Fiber Broadband Association, ACA Connects and NTCA–The Rural Broadband Association on projects related to the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment (BEAD) fund. Samuel Kornstein, managing director at Cartesian, said the company had good timing with BEAD because it had coincidentally published a study—before the BEAD legislation—estimating how much it would cost to deploy fiber to all parts of the country that didn’t have it. Kornstein said it’s tricky for the service providers because BEAD allows each state to customize its own program to a large extent. That makes for some complicated financial and mapping models, especially for the incumbents that already have footprints across different states. But the good news is that with BEAD being distributed at the state level, the operators can really engage with the state broadband officers and find the best local solutions.