New FRN Bulk Upload Templates:
USAC’s Special Edition News Brief of April 5, 2016, announced the long-awaited availability of bulk upload templates for FRN line items and recipients of service. There are separate and distinct templates for each of the following five service types:
- Category One - Voice Services
- Category One - Data Transmission and/or Internet Access
- Category Two - Internal Connections
- Category Two - Managed Internal Broadband Services (MIBS)
- Category Two - Basic Maintenance of Internal Connections
The following three points should be noted:
- Templates are to be used on a line-by-line FRN basis. A user must first create a specific FRN before uploading a completed template (see illustrations below).
- Use of the templates is optional. As discussed in the following section, FRNs may still be entered manually. Indeed, unless a particular FRN requires numerous line items and/or recipients of service, manual entry may be easier.
- Early experience with the templates indicates that users will need to enter data carefully, often re-ordering line items if data is corrected. Trial and error is a common experience. We recommend early reading of USAC’s quick tips and detailed instructions. Some instructions, such as the following, may have to be read more than once:
Copies of the templates can be downloaded from either:
- USAC’s FY 2016 Filing Window Headquarters page under the heading “Related Templates” or
- EPC at the FRN level within a draft Form 471.
For the latter, click on the “Bulk Upload” button.
Next, click on the “Download template” link.
Review of Manual FRN Entry Process:
As indicated above, all line item and recipients of service data can still be entered manually, often more easily than using the templates. The basic navigation process is not always intuitive, so an illustrated review is appropriate. Here are the four basic steps for creating an FRN:
| Step 1: |
Once you get to the  stage, click on the  button, and answer all the FRN questions. |
| Step 2: |
The tricky part comes after answering the last FRN question. At that point you get a list of FRNs such as:
Underneath this list are three buttons.
Although it’s tempting, do not click the big green button. You are not ready for a new FRN yet. What the list shows, in this example on the 2nd and 3rd lines, are completed FRNs. Each completed FRN shows at least 1 line item and a dollar amount in the FRN Calculation column.
The incomplete FRN you are working on is always listed first in the list, showing zero line items and no dollar amount.
|
| Step 3: |
To add a required line item(s), which is not intuitive, you must first click on the button-less FRN hyperlink on the first line.
Only then do you get an obvious line item button.
|
| Step 4: |
After answering all the questions for that line item, the system will display that FRN’s line item(s) as shown below. At that point, if there are more line items to add, you can again click the green “Add New FRN Line Item” and repeat Step 3. Otherwise, click the gray “Continue” button in the bottom right-hand corner. This will take you back to the updated list of FRNs shown in Step 2, to either add a new FRN or complete the Form 471 draft.
|
New ESA Entity Type Guidance:
USAC’s Special Edition News Brief of April 9, 2016, announced that it had established a new entity type — “ESA School District with No Schools” — to reflect the unique characteristics of this type of ESA and the way such an entity can be handled within EPC.
Last year, a non-school ESA filing an application for its own services was advised to create a large Block 4 listing all the schools for the districts in its service region. The ESA’s discount rate was based on the total enrollment and eligibility of those districts’ students.
Within the new EPC structure, however, this approach is problematic. With EPC’s strict parent-child requirement, it would mean that a school (i.e., a “child”) would be associated with two separate “parents,” the ESA and their own district. USAC’s new “ESA School District with No Schools” type retains the same discount rate calculation without listing the regional district schools. Essentially, it makes the ESA a large school reporting the total enrollment and eligibility of its districts’ students.
Note the following:
- Multi-site non-school ESAs will report their main site as their “school,” and list their other sites as NIFs. Because none of their sites are schools in the normal sense of the word, none of the sites are eligible for Category 2 funding.
- ESAs qualifying for this new entity type should contact CSB to update their EPC profiles and, if necessary, to remove any links to the ESA’s districts.
- ESAs with schools are not affected by this change. They will continue to be treated as “School Districts,” listing their own schools and NIFs.
- Additional guidance may be required as this new entity type is implemented within EPC.