BEAD Program: A Framework to Allocate Funding for Broadband Availability

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act’s $42.5B Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program holds out tremendous opportunity to close the broadband availability gap. To assist States and Territories and ACA Connects Members in seizing that opportunity, ACA Connects engaged Cartesian to develop a framework for how each State and Territory can spend BEAD funds on fixed broadband projects to connect their unserved and underserved locations.

Cartesian developed a framework that uses the latest data to estimate the number of unserved and underserved locations in each State and Territory and the amount of BEAD funding that they will receive. Using a proprietary and detailed model, we then develop fixed broadband deployment scenarios that explore how these funds can be used to maximize coverage. We understand that our analysis will evolve as we get better information from the FCC’s Broadband DATA Maps, but we believe our framework will give States and Territories a head start in developing plans to award funds for fixed broadband deployment projects to capable and experienced providers. 

Version 2.0 of our framework uses an enhanced methodology that takes advantage of the new FCC National Broadband Map, released in November 2022. Our analysis is now aligned to the Broadband Serviceable Locations (BSLs) in the FCC map, with inputs adjusted throughout to account for this change.