The Divide: Tarana's Carl Guardino on FWA's role in BEAD and beyond

This episode features Carl Guardino, vice president of government affairs and policy at Tarana Wireless. Back in September, Tarana announced it raised $50 million to support its growth as the company rapidly deploys its G1 fixed wireless access (FWA) platform in underserved and unserved communities.

We discuss that news, as well as some of the latest communities where G1 is helping to close the digital divide alongside ISP partners like Alyrica, Nextlink and DigitalC.

We also discuss the federal government's fiber-focused Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program, including a recent rules change issued by the NTIA on spectrum use and why it matters for fixed wireless operators – as well as why Guardino regrets that Tarana's tech wasn't commercially proven a bit sooner.

"It breaks my heart that Tarana Wireless wasn't two years ahead of itself in that 12-year R&D process before our hardware, software and Tarana cloud suite were commercially available, because honestly, I think that BEAD [notice of funding opportunity] would have been written a lot different," he says.

Here are some topics covered in this episode:

Related:Tarana touts its G1 tech for unlicensed 6GHz spectrum

For a lightly edited conversation transcript, click the caption button on the podcast player above.