December 6, 2019

TIP OF THE WEEK: Sign up for the December 11 webinar, Preparing for Funding Year (FY) 2020, for tips on updating entity profiles and preparing for the FY2020 application filing window. Click here to register.

Commitments for Funding Years 2019 and 2018

Funding Year 2019. USAC released FY2019 Wave 35 Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) on November 27 and Wave 36 FCDLs on December 5. As of December 6, FY2019 commitments total over $2.04 billion.

Funding Year 2018. USAC released FY2018 Wave 71 FCDLs on November 25 and Wave 72 FCDLs on December 2. As of December 6, FY2018 commitments total just under $2.25 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).

FCC Issues Category Two Budget Report and Order

The FCC has issued a Report and Order (FCC 19-117, released December 3, 2019) to permanently extend the Category Two budget approach with some modifications.

This order extends the Category Two test period through FY2020 and provides a prorated portion of Category Two funding, or 20%, to all applicants for the additional year. The order also adopts a modified Category Two budget approach starting with FY2021. USAC will provide further information about the changes for FY2021 in a future news brief.

Finally, the order waives the requirement that the Eligible Services List for FY2020 be released at least 60 days prior to the opening of the FY2020 application filing window.

PQA Requests for Information Are Going Out

The 2019 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 December from the domain name PQA@USACcms.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.

Erratum

In the EPC Deployment News article in the November 22 SL News Brief, we reported that the related action form will open as a pop-up window when a user clicks the Related Actions option from a record. In fact, the related action form will open in the same window.