February 22, 2019

Funding Year (FY) 2019 Window Countdown
(Form counts as of yesterday, 9:00 p.m. EST)

TIP OF THE WEEK: Don't forget to file your FY2019 FCC Form 470. Next Wednesday, February 27, 2019 is the last day to certify your FY2019 FCC Form 470 to allow for the required 28 days and still certify your FY2019 FCC Form 471 before the application filing window closes at 11:59 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, March 27.

Commitments for Funding Year 2018

Funding Year 2018. USAC released FY2018 Wave 46 Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) on February 21. As of February 22, FY2018 commitments total over $2.17 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).

E-rate Webinars

On March 5, we will conduct a regular format webinar on Common Audit Findings. In this webinar, we will discuss E-rate Program audits and the most common causes for audit findings.  If you are interested in attending, you can use this link to register.

Stay Tuned - We will announce our spring webinar schedule on the Webinars page on the USAC website next month.

Reminder for Last-minute FCC Form 470 Filers

For those applicants who need help with completing the FY2019 FCC Form 470, we have a recorded step-by-step video series in the Online Learning Library. The series contains the following individual videos:

• Starting Your FCC Form 470
• Service Requests: Category One and Category Two
• Technical Contact and Procurement Information
• FCC Form 470 Review and Certification
• Post an Additional RFP Document
• How to Search for FCC Forms 470

You can watch the entire video series in order to view the entire filing process, or simply watch the section(s) that you need help with. 

Update on Special Characters in Narrative Fields in EPC

When completing information in narrative fields that appear on EPC program forms, applicants cannot use special characters that also include added formatting from common word-processing programs such as Microsoft Word.

• Special characters are non-alphanumeric characters generally used for punctuation. Some common examples include: !#$%^&*-=+?<>/\()[].

When a user attempts to paste text directly from a word-processing program into an EPC narrative field, EPC will produce an error message identifying the special characters that it cannot read. This occurs because most word-processing programs add specialized formatting to text which the user cannot see but which can interfere with EPC's ability to read that text.

For example, if you look carefully, you can see a difference between normal quotation marks ("like these") and quotation marks with added formatting (“like these”). Other special characters which are not so obviously different in appearance can also include this added formatting.

You can use special characters in EPC narrative fields as long as those characters are free from added formatting. To do this:

• Prepare the text you want to add to a narrative field in any common word-processing program.
• Copy the text and paste it into Notepad or a similar program that strips out any added formatting.
• Then copy the text directly from Notepad and paste it in the EPC narrative field.