July 1999 Announcements

Please click on the topic below to view the most recent announcements:

The Schools and Libraries Division is pleased to report that nearly all Year 1 appeals have been completed. For those applicants whose appeals have been granted, we have issued a special Appeals Funding Commitment Decisions Letter that will tell you the new funding amounts resulting from your appeal. Those receiving an Appeals Funding Commitment Decisions Letter will now need to file a Form 486 or BEAR Form reflecting those commitments.

There is still a very small group of appeals for which we are awaiting final policy decisions. Once the policy issues have been resolved, we will expeditiously answer these appeals. We are currently contacting these applicants by phone.

If You Still Haven't Heard

If you have not heard from us about a Year 1 appeal - either via phone or via mail - we encourage you to e-mail mrevenaugh@universalservice.org to determine the status of your appeal. Appellants that have appeals pending policy decisions should have heard from us by phone and all others should have received a letter from us regarding our decision on your appeal.

If You Disagree with an Appeal Decision

Once you receive our decision on your appeal, you have a right to appeal that decision to the FCC within 30 days of issuance. For complete instructions on filing an appeal with the FCC, go to http://www.sl.universalservice.org/reference/appeals.asp on our Web Site, or call 800-959-0733 and key in document #511.

With the mailing of the third wave of E-rate funding commitment letters, more than one-fourth of all Year Two applicants will have received decisions on their requests for discounts on telecommunications technologies. In the last two weeks, more than 8,400 Funding Commitment Decisions Letters have been mailed by the Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) of the Schools & Libraries (USAC) allocating over $137 million in E-rate funds for the 1999-2000 program year. Letters have reached schools and libraries in all 50 states and will continue to be mailed on a weekly basis.

Today, the SLD will mail out 1,400 letters committing nearly $34 million for discounted communications services to schools and libraries across the country. Over two-thirds of the funding is targeted for telecommunications services and Internet access for applicants at all discount levels (20% to 90%). Libraries will receive nearly $4 million (or 8%) of the funding commitments. Schools and school districts will receive $31 million (or 90%) of the money with the remaining $500,000 going to consortia.

Click Here to view Wave 3 Funding Commitment Reports by State

Wave 2 Press Release  |  Wave 1 Press Release

Dear School, Library and Telecommunications Leaders:

This week, the Schools and Libraries Division of the Universal Service Administrative Company will issue its first funding commitments on E-rate applications submitted for Year Two.

We are pleased to confirm that there is sufficient funding to fill all approved requests for "Priority One" services - those for telecommunications services and Internet access. We will work through "Priority Two" requests (internal connections) beginning with the needier applicants first - those at discount levels 80% and above.

Waves of Funding Commitments

This year, we will send letters to applicants and service providers in waves as soon as we have approved requests on telecommunications services and Internet access. This means you could receive one or more letters, depending on how your application was structured. (For more details, see "Questions and Answers About the Waves" on the SLD Web site, www.sl.universalservice.org.)

Even as Funding Commitment Decisions Letters begin to flow, a small number of applications are still in the data entry process. This means that some of you may not have received a 471 Receipt Acknowledgement Letter. We anticipate completing the data entry process soon. All applicants can be assured that sufficient funds are being set aside for each and every application received within the window for "Priority One" services. Furthermore, if your request for internal connections is at the same discount level as those in previous waves, you also can be assured that there is sufficient funding for your application.

A Wave of Funding Commitments Every Week

This year, I am pleased to announce that letters will be mailed on a weekly basis. We heard from you that regularity and predictability were essential for your planning purposes, so every Friday, regardless of wave size, the SLD will mail out a wave of commitment letters to applicants. Every Monday we will post the lists of recipients to our Web Site. The exception is the first wave: it is being issued the day it is ready. This means two mailings in the first week.

What Can You Do to Speed the Process?

Believe it or not, we need your help to complete processing your applications. If you will be gone over the summer months, please update your information in our Summer Contact database, so our problem resolution and Program Integrity Assurance (PIA) team can reach you in the event they have questions regarding your Year Two E-rate application. Service providers can also search the database by Billed Entity Number if they need to reach you during this same period.

You may register your summer contact via the SLD Web Site or, if you don't have Web access, by calling our help line (1-888-203-8100).

Applicants can also help us out by returning calls to our PIA team as quickly as possible. A call from a member of our PIA team means your application is now being reviewed for compliance with program rules, but that there is a question about your request. A phone call or any needed documentation returned in a timely fashion will help us finish our review sooner rather than later.

Appeals and Special Situations for Year One

Even as applicants across the country are beginning to hear about their Year Two funding commitments, we are wrapping up a number of loose ends from Year One. These include:

1. Those who filed appeals regarding your Year One funding commitments have either heard back from us or will hear from us this week.

2. Applicants intending to use the summer "grace period" for non-recurring internal connections should file updated Forms 486 for these services, to extend the contract end date to no later than 9/30/99.

3. Many applicants whose contracts for recurring telecommunications and Internet access services expired before December 31, 1998 will qualify for six additional months of funding - but they must act quickly. The deadline for filing an updated Form 486 for these services is July 16. (See the Web site for details.)

Working Hard to Serve You Better

We are continuously trying to improve, so that the E-rate application process is easier and more efficient for both service providers and applicants. We have made a number of positive changes based on your comments over the last year. These include.

• On-line filing for the Form 471: Our pilot launch in Year Two was a significant success despite its narrow technical requirements. We will be expanding the online Form 471 to include a broader range of browsers and Apple Macintosh computers for next year.

• Bar-coding and scanning technologies: We are making it easier for our customer service and application review staff to track applications and answer questions.

• Electronic notifications: Service Providers can receive the Form 471 Receipt Acknowledgement Letters, the Funding Commitment Decisions Letters and Form 486 Notification Letters electronically.

• Regional PIA Representatives: We have reorganized Program Integrity Assurance teams by region so that they are familiar with state and local issues that affect E-rate discounts.

All of these new features allow us to distribute discounts more quickly and efficiently.

There is still plenty of room for improvement. We will be convening an advisory group soon to focus specifically on customer service. In addition, we are already planning improvements for Year Three. We are grateful for the good advice from the Year Three Task Force of applicants and service providers, and from those of you who took the time to respond to our, "Help Us Improve the E-rate Program for the Future" query we issued in March. We will keep you informed about improvements for the 2000-2001 program year as these are finalized.

As we move to bring Years One, Two and Three to the next critical stages, we want to thank you for your own remarkable efforts to make this program work. Your diligence, optimism, and frank feedback have been absolutely essential to our shared mission to fulfill the promise of the E-rate for every American community.

If you will be away from your usual location or modes of contact during the coming weeks, please use our new, improved Summer Contact database to let us know how to reach you (or your stand-in) if we have questions as we complete review of your E-rate application. The database will allow you to provide temporary contact information via the Web Site (or, if you don’t have Web access, by calling our help line). Our problem resolution and Program Integrity Assurance staff will use this database as they work on your application, so you can help avoid processing delays by providing your summer contact information as soon as possible. (Service providers can also search the database by Billed Entity Number if they need to reach you during this same period.)

To use the Summer Contact database, you’ll need to enter your Billed Entity Number. Then you can type in any pertinent information (such as an alternate phone number or contact name) that will help us find you this summer. Those without Web access should call 888-203-8100, and our customer service staff will enter the data for you. Please note: Summer contact data will not affect your permanent record in our data system.

The FCC Form 486, Receipt of Service Confirmation, has been revised in several small but very important ways for Year 2. These revisions were approved just as Waves 1 and 2 of the Funding Commitment Decisions Letter were being prepared this week, so FCDL packages in these two waves do NOT include Form 486. We will be sending the new Form 486 to Wave 1 and 2 recipients under separate cover, and will include the new Form 486 in all future waves. In addition, the new Form 486 is now available on the SLD Web Site, www.sl.universalservice.org/Reference/forms.asp, to download, print, and use for all Form 486 purposes.

For Year 1 services only, we encourage applicants to use the new Form 486, however, we will accept the old form too.

The revised Form 486 contains newly added language in Item 8 of the certification section that requires funded applicants to affirm that they have signed, written contracts for all services that require such contracts. The certification identifies one category of service that does NOT require signed, written contracts: tariffed telecommunications services, which are purchased at regulated prices without a written contract. The instructions provide that, for Internet access service, evidence of month-to-month billing will be considered as satisfying the requirement for a written contract. Please note that such services do not qualify as pre-existing contracts and require posting to the Web Site on a Form 470 for each funding year.

Contracts should be signed before filing a Form 471. Recognizing that other legally binding arrangements may precede the actual contract signing, SLD requires certification through submission of the new Form 486 that actual contracts have been signed.

For questions regarding the Form 486, call 888-203-8100.

Year 2 is here!

The SLD mailed its first wave of Funding Commitment Decisions Letters on Tuesday, July 13, 1999. In this first wave, more than 6,000 letters were issued committing over $90 million. The list of recipients can be found on the SLD Web Site. Another wave of letters will be issued this week and information about this wave will be posted on Monday, July 19.

When Will You See Discounted Bills?

Although both the SLD and your service providers have been working hard to achieve our goal of discounted bills for your Year 2 services, please do not expect that your approved discounts will be reflected on the next bill or several bills after your FCDL. This is because, for service providers, the FCDL is just the first step toward providing discounts to you. Once they receive a funding commitment notification from SLD, service providers usually need to:

1. Get account numbers and other information from you in order to properly set up the discounts on your bills. In many cases, they will request that you complete a Prediscount Cost Calculation Grid to secure this important information to properly discount your bill.

2. Receive notification from SLD that you have submitted your Form 486 for the service and that it has been approved.

3. Program their billing systems and adjust your billing records so that they can issue your discounted bills. This process is complex and time consuming, and will likely take at least two months from the date your service providers receive the FCDL and any additional information they need from you.

This means that, if you receive your FCDL in July, you should expect to receive a discounted bill no earlier than September for typical monthly services.

Some service providers may be able to provide discounted bills more quickly, and others may take even longer. Until the discount can be integrated into your bill, your service provider will bill you in full. Your participation in the E-rate program does not alter your obligation to pay in full for the services you receive.

The FCC’s Tenth Order on Reconsideration will allow 1998-1999 E-rate applicants who have been approved for discounts for recurring telecommunications services, Internet access, or dedicated services—but whose contracts for these services originally expired before December 31, 1998—to receive up to six additional months of funding under certain conditions (see Special Instructions). The additional funding is intended to cover the equivalent of January-June 1999, the extended end of the program year. No funding will be provided for the cost of services between the original contract end date and December 31, 1998.