Wave 11 Funding for FY 2002
Wave 11 of Funding Year 2002 will be released on Tuesday, September 10. Total funding in this Wave is approximately $37 million for 225 applications. The cumulative total for FY 2002 is now $779 million for 24,400 applications.
Funding is still being provided only for Priority One (Telecommunications and Internet Access) services. Applicants with discount rates below 80% are being told that their requests for Priority Two (Internal Connection) services will be denied due to insufficient funds. A decision on the exact level of Priority Two funding is not expected until at least late September.
Our E-rate News for the Week of 7/15 - 7/19/2000 (see the Archive section of the E-Rate Central Web site) included a discussion of information requests being made by several service providers. At the time, Verizon Wireless was asking its E-rate customers to complete a form indicating a desire for discounted billing and, if so, asking for specific account and eligible user information.
Recently, Verizon Wireless has been contacting applicants who were requesting discounts and whose accounts contained a mix of both eligible and ineligible users. Apparently, Verizon Wireless' billing system can handle E-rate discounts only if all the users on a specific account are eligible. Customers with mixed eligibility accounts are being asked to split them into separate eligible and ineligible accounts.
If discount billing is critical, you should go ahead and split your accounts. If not, it may be easier to forsake discounts on monthly bills and submit periodic BEAR reimbursement requests instead. Please remember, when filing BEAR forms, that it is the applicant's responsibility to request reimbursements only on eligible service charges.