May 25, 2012

Commitments for Funding Year 2010

Funding Year 2010. USAC will release FY2010 Wave 95 FCDLs May 30. This wave can include commitments for approved Priority 2 services at all discount levels. As of May 25, FY2010 commitments total over $3.05 billion.

On the day the FCDLs are mailed, you can check to see if you have a commitment by using USAC's Automated Search of Commitments tool.

FCC Announces FY2012 Funding Cap

On May 18, 2012, the Wireline Competition Bureau announced in Public Notice DA 12-791 that the E-rate program funding cap for Funding Year 2012 is $2,338,786,577. The new cap represents a 2.1% inflation-adjusted increase from FY2011's $2,290,682,250 cap.

Fall 2012 Applicant Training Dates and Locations Announced

Below is the list of the cities, dates, and hotels for the fall 2012 applicant training sessions:

* Please note that previous issues of the SL News Brief featured an earlier date. They have been revised to reflect the correct date.

To register with USAC for the training or to make a room reservation at a conference hotel, refer to the Trainings and Outreach page on the USAC website.

Registrations are on a first-come, first-served basis. Please register only for the session that you want to attend. You can email USAC Training with questions or to cancel your registration if your plans change. 

Summer Period for Information Requests Starts Today

USAC has procedures to contact applicants and service providers if more information is necessary to process a form. These procedures are described in more detail in the Missing Information guidance document on the USAC website. Below we discuss two of the most common situations where USAC needs more information:

• Problem Resolution. If USAC cannot complete data entry of a paper form because information is missing or inconsistent, Problem Resolution will attempt to reach the contact person listed on the form (or in our database, if no contact information is provided on the form) to obtain the necessary information.
• Program Integrity Assurance (PIA) review. If USAC needs more information from an applicant to complete the review of an application, a PIA initial reviewer will use the contact information provided on the form to send questions and to inform the applicant of correctable errors discovered on the form during the application review process.

In these situations, USAC's customary procedure is as follows:

• USAC uses your preferred mode of contact to send you questions and to request responses. For PIA review, if your preferred mode of contact is telephone, we will call you and request an email address or fax number in order to provide you with our questions in writing.
• If we have not heard from you after seven days from our first attempt to contact you, we will attempt to contact you again and we will also inform your state E-rate coordinator that we are attempting to contact you.
• If we have not heard from you after 15 days from our first attempt to contact you, we will use the information we have to complete processing of your application. For a paper form, this may mean that we will have to return the form to you without completing data entry. For an FCC Form 471, this may mean that the funding you requested will be reduced or denied.

We realize that, during a summer period and a winter period each year, many applicants are unavailable due to extended holiday and break schedules. Problem Resolution or PIA will not continue the process described above during these periods unless we speak by telephone with the contact person or someone else who has been designated to respond to our questions.

• Our summer period is defined as the Friday before Memorial Day through the Friday after Labor Day. For 2012, the dates of the summer period are May 25 through September 7.

If our first attempt to reach you is on or after May 25, and we cannot confirm by telephone that you are available to respond to our questions, we will not begin Problem Resolution or PIA review until after September 7.

However, if we have made a successful contact with you before May 25, your 15-day response clock has started and we will act on the information we have on hand if we have not heard from you by the response deadline. We define a successful contact as:

• A sent email message with no return notification of non-delivery or out-of-office response or 
• A sent fax with a confirmation of successful transmission or
• A voicemail left at the contact person's telephone number if the recorded greeting does not state that the contact person is out of the office or
• A live person answering our call at the contact telephone number or a return call responding to our message.

If PIA has already contacted you and you wish to designate someone to answer questions in your absence, be sure to send your designee's contact information to your PIA reviewer. If PIA has not contacted you and your designee will be checking your messages, be sure that you have provided written authorization for your designee to answer questions about your application. PIA will request this authorization in case any changes need to be made.

If you designate someone to answer questions in your absence, be sure that person has sufficient knowledge of your application to respond accurately. If someone answers a call from PIA but is not in a position to answer PIA questions, make sure the PIA reviewer understands that the review of your application should be put on hold until you return to the office.

Remember that you can ask for more time to respond if you need it.

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