Commitments for Funding Year 2015

Funding Year 2015. USAC will release Funding Year (FY) 2015 Wave 11 Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) on August 7. This wave includes commitments for approved requests for all service types and at all discount levels. As of July 31, FY2015 commitments total over $932 million.

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.

Completing FCC Form 470, Part 1 - Basic Information

In the July 10 SL News Brief, we included some basic information about the FCC Form 470 for FY2016. In the next several issues of the SL News Brief, we will provide guidance on how to complete each section of the form. Remember that this form is now filed only through USAC's E-rate Productivity Center (EPC).

In this issue we will cover the "Basic Information" section of the online form. You can also watch a short video demonstration covering the same information by choosing the Basic Information video from the FCC Form 470 Video Series page.

1. Log in to your account in EPC.

In order to start an FCC Form 470, you must be a full-rights or partial-rights user for the organization you represent. In other words, you must be able to create and certify forms (full-rights user), or just create forms (partial-rights user).

First, review the entity information associated with your organization in EPC. For example, if you are a school district, review the address and other contact information for the school district itself and for all of the individual schools in your school district. Going forward, the system will use the entity information in your organization's profile to automatically populate certain fields in other E-rate program forms so that you don't have to re-enter that information each time you file a form.

If you have one or more new entities that should be included on your application, call the Client Service Bureau at (888) 203-8100 to create each new entity associated with your organization. For example, if you are a library system with three existing branches and a fourth under construction that will be opening soon, you will need to add the fourth entity to your organization profile.

2. Make sure you have an FCC Registration Number.

Entities that do business with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – such as the Billed Entity that files the FCC Form 470 – must have an FCC Registration Number (FCC RN). So, for example, a school district that files program forms on behalf of its 15 individual schools needs an FCC RN, but the individual schools do not.

If you need an FCC RN, you can register and obtain one quickly through the FCC's COmission REgistration System (CORES) webpage. After you have obtained your FCC RN, enter it in your entity profile in EPC so that it is available for the system to automatically populate in the program forms you file in EPC.

3. Start your form.

To start, go to the "Reports" tab in your EPC account, click on "My Landing Page," and then click the "Apply Now" link in the top right-hand corner of your landing page.

You will see that the progress bar at the top of the FCC Form 470 page shows that you are in the "Basic Information" section of the form. Also, your entity's address, contact information, and FCC RN have already been populated in the area labeled "Billed Entity Information."

Your next step is to enter your own identifier, or "Application Nickname," to distinguish this form from any other forms you may file. You can use any combination of alphanumeric characters to create a nickname. For example, if you are filing two FCC Forms 470, you might label them "Category One" and "Category Two."

Note that there are three buttons available at the bottom of the screen.

• Selecting the "Discard Form" button will delete this form in its entirety. If you choose this option, you will no longer be able to access this form.
• Selecting the "Save & Share" button will save the information you have entered up to this point and allow other users that have access to your organization's account (i.e., any users inside or outside your organization that have rights granted by your account administrator) to access this form.
• Selecting the "Save & Continue" button will save the information you have entered to this point and allow you to continue.

Click "Save & Continue" to go to the next page.

4. Complete the "Application Type" and "Recipients of Service" page.

On this page, you can now see the following:

• The Application Nickname you entered on the previous page.
• The FCC Form 470 application number assigned by the system. This number is shorter than the 15-digit numbers from previous years, and the first two digits now indicate the funding year ("16" indicates FY2016).
• The date and time when your form information was last saved.
• Information about your application type and recipients of service. This information is populated directly by the system from your profile in EPC. If this information is incorrect or incomplete, you cannot update it here in the online form. Your account administrator must update it in your organization's profile in EPC through the "Manage Organizations" link. After the update is complete, the updated information will appear here in the form.

Note that you now have an additional button at the bottom of the page. The "Back" button allows you to return to the previous page.

Click "Save & Continue" to go to the next page.

5. Complete the "Consultant Information" and "Contact Information" page.

If your account administrator has associated a consultant with your organization, you will see the consultant's contact information on this page. If consultant information does not appear but you have a consultant, the account administrator must use the "Add a Consulting Firm" link in the organization's profile in order for the appropriate information to be automatically populated by the system in this form. If you need help doing this, you can watch a short video tutorial on how to add a consultant.

Then indicate whether you are the main contact person for this form.

• If you click "Yes," your information appears to the right.
• If you click "No," you can search for and identify another person associated with your organization to be the contact person. You can start typing either the name or the email address of the person you want to search for and the system will provide a list of possible matches. You can then click the appropriate name to populate this field.

We will provide step-by-step guidance on the other sections of the form in the coming weeks. Remember that you can also access short video demonstrations of each section from the FCC Form 470 Video Series page. 

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