News of the Week

Wave 44 for FY 2016 was released last Thursday, April 27th for a total of $47.9 million.  Cumulative national funding through Wave 44 is $2.50 billion.  Wave 45 is scheduled to be released on Thursday, May 4th.

Last week’s newsletter of April 24th and the newsletter of April 17th, discussed a series of questions sent to applicants who filed for special construction of lit, dark, or self-provisioned fiber.  The initial deadline to submit responses to these questions is Monday, May 1, 2017.

If you are unable to respond to the inquiry by Monday May 1, 2017, submit a request for an extension to SL-SETeam@usac.org.  In submitting a request for an extension you should indicate why an extension is needed, such as waiting for information from the vendor.  USAC should automatically grant a seven day extension, but other extensions will be harder to get.  However, we suspect USAC will grant additional extensions as long as the applicant is working in good faith to respond to the inquiries.  If a second extension is needed we strongly encourage you to provide a partial response to the questions to demonstrate your good faith effort.  As with any extension request, you should ask for confirmation that the extension has been granted by USAC.

We have heard of several instances where applicants have requested extensions from USAC, but have not received confirmation that the extension has been granted.  With the deadline on Monday this is very disconcerting for these applicants.  We are hopeful USAC will announce that any requested extensions will be granted, especially with less than two weeks to go in the FY 2017 filing window.

Finally, we have heard that some applicants receiving lit fiber through regulated companies are unable to provide some of the information requested in the inquiry because their service providers claim the customer information would violate the FCC’s own requirements regarding sharing Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI).  These regulated carriers are also concerned that the inquiries are asking for confidential pricing and costing information that, understandably, they are hesitant to share with applicants.  One low cost solution to this problem is for the FCC or USAC, as the regulatory agency over these service providers, to work directly with the service providers to get the information they believe they need.  This would work better than forcing applicants into the uncomfortable position of trying to get sensitive information from their service providers.

Pro-active USAC Outreach for “Stuck” Applications:

A variety of EPC issues are currently preventing under 400 applications from being processed.  USAC has issued the following letter to those affected applicants:

We hope that USAC will provide additional information on those applications for which review is completed and whose decision is pending only the release into a funding wave.  Foreshadowing the FCDL with an email stating the decision would further USAC’s commitment to transparency.  We recognize this could pose some additional challenges such as whether or not an applicant can appeal an adverse decision prior to the release of the FCDL but at this late stage in the year, with close of the FY 2017 window and June 30th rapidly approaching, any additional information that can be shared by USAC is valuable.

RFCDLs and Other EPC Updates:

Our newsletter of April 17th discussed the first release of the Revised Funding Commitment Decision Letters (“RFCDLs”) for FY 2016.  This past week, USAC has updated the FRN Status Tool (“FST”) to include the date, the “Appeal Wave Number”, and the “Revised FCDL Date”.

The column heading “Appeal Wave Number” is consistent with past Data Retrieval Tool (“DRT”) headings despite the RFCDL now encompassing decisions on non-appeal events like service substitutions and SPIN changes.  In fact, the first four “Appeal Waves” have had no appeal decisions rendered.  We are very happy to report that USAC will be adding two more columns to the FST.  While the exact column headings are not known, the two additional data points are the RFCDL comments and rationale.  This resolves E-Rate Central’s concern cited in our newsletter of April 17th.

In addition, USAC has updated the Form 471 Download Tool and Search Commitments Tool.  Both tools now feature “current data” which reflects RFCDL decisions on appeals, service substitutions and SPIN changes.  Note: this update does not apply to legacy tools such as the DRT which does not contain FY 2016 data.

USAC’s Schools and Libraries News Brief of May 5, 2017, provides the following tips for those applicants who have not yet filed their Form 471 applications for FY 2017:

1. Make sure that you can log into EPC to be able to work on a Form 471.
2. Start your Form 471 even if you are not ready to provide funding request details.
3. Wait the full 28 days after filing your Form 470, even if you filed the Form 470 after April 13th.
4. Review the answers to your connectivity questions.
5. Create a contract record for each new contract or legally binding agreement.
6. Ask CSB to create missing entities, if possible, and attach them to your organization.
7. For questions or problems, create a Customer Service case in EPC to provide detailed information and/or seek written responses from CSB.
8. Use the “interim SPIN” (143666666) if USAC has not yet issued a SPIN to your chosen service provider.
9. Take advantage of CSB’s extended service hours (see News Brief).
10. Do not wait until the last minute to contact CSB with questions or issues.