March 27, 2020

Funding Year (FY) 2020 FCC Form 471 Filing Window Countdown

The Funding Year (FY) 2020 application filing window will close on Wednesday, April 29, 2020, at 11:59:59 p.m. EDT.

The last day to post an FCC Form 470 and still be able to timely certify an FCC Form 471 is Wednesday, April 1, 2020.

FCC Form 470 and 471 counts as of yesterday, 9:00 p.m. EDT

TIP OF THE WEEK: Remember that you cannot enter the details of any contracts that you have signed directly into the FCC Form 471. Before you start your FCC Form 471, we suggest that you watch our video on "How to Create a Contract Record" for a demonstration on entering your contract information.

Commitments for Funding Year 2019

Funding Year 2019. USAC released FY2019 Wave 52 Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) on March 26. As of March 27, FY2019 commitments total over $2.28 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 Public Notice on Community Use

On March 23, 2020, the FCC released a public notice (DA 20-234) to remind schools and libraries that are closed due to the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak that they are permitted to allow the general public to use E-rate–supported Wi-Fi networks while on the school's campus or library property.

Libraries can allow the public to access E-rate funded services even when they are closed to the public due to the coronavirus pandemic. Similarly, closed schools may allow access to E-rate–funded services to community members who access the internet while on a school's campus so long as the schools do not charge for the use of the service.

Individual schools and libraries can establish their own policies regarding use of their Wi-Fi networks during closures, including hours of use.

FCC Form 470 Reminders

For those applicants who are still posting an FCC Form 470 and opening their competitive bidding processes, we are providing a few reminders below. If you have questions, the Client Service Bureau (CSB) is open weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. To contact CSB, you can open a customer service case in EPC or call (888) 203-8100.

You certify an FCC Form 470 to open your competitive bidding process.

Competitive bidding is a formal process to identify and request the products and services you need so that potential service providers can review your requests and submit bids in response. You list these products and services on the FCC Form 470 and then certify the form in EPC.

• You are responsible for ensuring that the competitive bidding process is open and fair.
• You must wait at least 28 days after the FCC Form 470 is certified before you select a service provider, sign a contract, and certify an FCC Form 471.

You file the FCC Form 470 online in EPC.

In order to start an FCC Form 470, you must be an authorized user in EPC for your entity. Partial-rights and full-rights users can complete the required information on the form, but you must be a full-rights user to certify the form.

You can contact your entity's EPC account administrator to be created as a user or to change your user rights. If you do not have an account administrator, you can contact CSB for assistance.

Some information should have been completed in your organization's profile in EPC before you file a program form.

Your entity information – including address and contact information, attributes for the schools in a school district or libraries in a library system, and other pertinent data – is pulled into program forms that you file from your organization's profile in EPC.

• CSB can help you create a new entity if you do not yet have an EPC profile.
• If you do have an EPC profile but you did not have a chance to update your information before the application filing window opened, you can provide any necessary information in the narrative fields on your program forms.

If you issue a request for proposal (RFP) and/or RFP documents, they must be uploaded to the FCC Form 470.

If you are issuing an RFP or RFP document, you must upload those documents to your FCC Form 470. We use "RFP" and "RFP document" generically to refer to any bidding document that describes your project and requested services in more detail than that provided in the data entry fields on the FCC Form 470.

RFP documents you issue after an FCC Form 470 is certified must be uploaded to your form. Watch the "Post an Additional RFP Document" video located under the FCC Form 470 section of the Videos page on the USAC website to see a demonstration.

If you want to make a significant change to the services and products you have requested, you may need to post a new FCC Form 470.

For more information, you can refer to last week's SL News Brief. Note that posting a new FCC Form 470 will start a new 28-day waiting period.

You will receive a Receipt Notification Letter in your EPC News feed shortly after you certify your form, and service providers will be able to view your form and all uploaded attachments.

Within a few minutes of certification, USAC will issue your FCC Form 470 Receipt Notification Letter (RNL) under the News tab in your EPC account.

EPC has a search and download function that will allow service providers with EPC accounts to search for certified FCC Forms 470. Also, anyone – even a service provider who does not have an EPC account – will be able to view a PDF version of your form and its associated RFP documents using the View an FCC Form 470 tool on the Tools page on the USAC website.

For more information on the FCC Form 470 and the competitive bidding process, you can review Step 1: Competitive Bidding and the various guidance documents linked to this page on the USAC website. 

FY2020 Category Two Budget Tool Reminders

Here are a few reminders for applicants who are using the FY2020 C2 budget tool for information on their C2 budgets for FY2020.

• The C2 budget numbers displayed in the new tool are based on student counts or square footage from the current entity profiles in EPC. These numbers may be modified during the review of your application.
• This tool is updated each night to reflect the current committed amounts for all entities. You will need to download the tool each day to get the most recent commitment data.
• If you are pasting numbers from another document into the Entity Number column, you must remove any formatting, for example, by using the "Paste Values" function from your spreadsheet.
• If you did not update your current profile numbers, you can estimate your C2 budget by entering your student count or square footage in the Projected Student Count or Square Footage. The spreadsheet will display a projected FY2020 C2 budget and a projected FY2020 C2 remaining budget in the last two columns of the spreadsheet. (Note that this column will display the FY2020 budget floor by default if you have not entered a projected value.)
• You will receive an error message if you enter an entity number for a school district, library system, non-instructional facility (NIF), or consortium; if the entity number does not exist in our database; or if a C2 budget cannot be calculated for that entity.

Below are the three FY2020 multipliers and the FY2020 C2 funding floor.

• The multiplier for schools is $195.63 per student.
• The multiplier for libraries with an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) locale code of 11, 12, or 21 is $6.52 per square foot.
• The multiplier for libraries with other IMLS locale codes is $3.00 per square foot.

If your calculation results in a dollar figure less than $11,998.43, the entity's FY2020 budget is $11,998.43. Keep in mind that, for all entities, the tool will subtract all pre-discount C2 amounts from commitments from FY2015 through FY2019 from the budget calculation.

For questions about FY2020 C2 budgets, you can refer to the detailed instructions on the USAC website or contact CSB.