Calix Expands 24-Year Commitment to Rural America With Exclusive Ready.net Partnership To Simplify BEAD

Today, Calix, Inc. (NYSE: CALX) announced an exclusive partnership with industry-leading funding solution provider Ready.net, Inc. The partnership enables Calix to leverage Ready.net’s powerful tools as part of its existing Funding Consult Program and connect over 1,600 Calix customers with a streamlined portal to apply for and win grant funds, secure capital, and adhere to public funding requirements. At the same time, Calix will be the exclusive broadband platform and managed services provider featured on the Ready.net platform. With this partnership, both broadband service providers (BSPs) and their state broadband offices will be able to dramatically simplify every stage of the funding process for the Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program and others like it.

Calix BSPs face urgent deadlines in 2024 to apply for BEAD—a once-in-a-generation $42 billion federal funding initiative to connect underserved areas across the United States. In September 2023, Calix reaffirmed its commitment to “Build America, Buy America,” required by BEAD, to ensure customers leveraging its end-to-end broadband platform and Wi-Fi systems comply with federal funding requirements.

BEAD aligns to the vision Calix was founded on 24 years ago—to support rural USA and the BSPs that serve those communities. By investing $1.2 billion and more than a decade to innovate the world’s only end-to-end broadband platform, Calix ensures that any BSP, regardless of size, can provide innovative experiences to millions of subscribers while seamlessly expanding to serve multiple markets—residential, business, multi-dwelling unit (MDU), and local government—and efficiently leveraging public funding to strengthen their business. In 2023, customers leveraged the Calix platform to conduct a collective 323 million automated FCC latency tests and over 17.5 million FCC speed tests for compliance reporting. Over the past three years, the Calix funding team has helped hundreds of BSPs secure over $2 billion through federal and state funding programs.

Ready.net brings extensive knowledge of broadband business models to the partnership with Calix. With deep experience in innovating solutions for network planning and analysis, they deliver valuable insights for cost estimation and average revenue per user (ARPU). Ready.net also automates project management, tracking, compliance, and reporting for state broadband offices—increasing process efficiency for the state, stakeholders, and BSPs.