October 19, 2018

Commitments for FY2018

USAC released FY2018 Wave 28 FCDLs on October 19, 2018. As of October 19, FY2018 commitments total over $1.83 billion.

On the date that FCDLs are issued, you can access your FCDL notification from the Notifications section of your landing page in the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC).

New EPC Videos Posted in the Online Learning Library

This week we posted five video tutorials to help new applicants become familiar with EPC, the account and application management portal for the E-rate Program. Program participants use this tool to manage program processes, receive notifications and to contact customer service. These videos are located in the Online Learning Library on the USAC website and provide instruction on the following subjects:

• Logging in for the First Time
• How to Create a New User
• Add a Consultant User
• Manage User Permissions
• Modify Your Account Administrator

As a reminder, we will cover some of these topics during our EPC 101 for Applicants webinar on October 25, 2018 at 3:00 p.m. EDT. This webinar is recommended for applicants that are new to the E-rate Program. To register for the webinar, click here. Registration is also available on the Webinars page.

2018 Live Tribal Training Events - Registration Opening Soon

USAC is working on dates and locations for the 2018 Tribal Training live training events. Registration will open at the time of the training announcement. These full-day, regional events are designed to help Tribal applicants and Tribally-owned service providers prepare for the upcoming funding year.

Participants will have the opportunity to learn more about the E-rate Program, receive Tribal-specific guidance and speak with USAC's Tribal Liaison, Mackenzie Howard. During the training you'll have time to ask questions and hear directly from the E-rate Program team on key topics important to successful participation in the program.

Online Training Sessions

This year, in addition to hosting fall regional training, USAC is developing a set of modernized online training modules that will cover some of the same content that will be presented during the in-person training sessions. The training will be available through USAC's website starting in December 2018. More information about this training opportunity will be provided later this year.

PQA Requests for Information Are Going Out

The 2018 Payment Quality Assurance (PQA) assessment program is underway. PQA is a program that assesses E-rate payments made on invoices submitted during the past 12 months to verify that the payments were properly made – in other words, that all program rules were followed correctly when the payment was authorized and disbursed.

For disbursements made each month, a certain number of payments will be chosen, and applicants will be asked to provide specific documentation – for example, customer bills that support invoices submitted to USAC – to verify that those payments were made correctly. It is important that you maintain proper documentation in order to be able to respond correctly and completely to PQA requests.

The email request notifying applicants whose payments have been selected for PQA are being sent the first week of November from the domain name usac.i-sight.com. Please check your email and respond promptly if you receive an email from USAC's PQA Program. Also check your spam folder or junk email folder to see if it contains an email from this domain. This will help expedite your review.

• Do not hesitate to contact your reviewer if you have questions. Contact information is provided in the email.
• Also, contact your PQA reviewer if you are unable to respond by the deadline.