E-Rate for FY 2025:

Wave 2 of funding commitment decision letters for FY 2025 was released on Thursday, May 1st, for $8.53 million.  Total funding is now $989 million.  Currently, USAC has funded 52.2% of submitted applications, representing 30.5% of the dollars requested.

E-Rate for FY 2024:

Wave 54 for FY 2024 was released on Friday, May 2nd, for $8.05 million.  Total funding is now $2.67 billion.  Currently, USAC has funded 98.4% of submitted applications, representing 93.0% of the dollars requested.

Cybersecurity Pilot Program – Application Window:

The Form 471 application window for the Cybersecurity Pilot Program opened on March 18th and will close on September 15th, 2025.  Total pilot funding is capped at $200 million for 707 applicants.

Upcoming Dates:

Delete³Reply Comments:

April 28th was the deadline for submitting reply comments to the FCC Chairman’s “Delete, Delete, Delete” initiative (DA 25-219) (see our newsletter of April 14th).  The purpose of the entire proceeding was to seek comments on the elimination of any and all — not just E-Rate — FCC rules and regulations that are unneeded and/or out-of-date.  Reply comments dealing primarily with E-Rate were submitted by:

• American Library Association (“ALA”)
• Benton Institute
• Michigan Statewide Education Network (“MISEN”)
• Schools, Health & Libraries Broadband Coalition (“SHLB”)
• State E-Rate Coordinators’ Alliance (“SECA”)

The most useful E-Rate recommendations supported in these comments included:

• Elimination of the Form 486 by including the CIPA certifications in the Form 471.
• Elimination of the “extraordinary circumstances” requirement traditionally imposed by the FCC as a condition for waiving invoice deadlines.
• Elimination of program procedures that hinder or disallow mid-year service provider transitions or bandwidth increases.
• Elimination of Form 470 drop-down menu category confusion.

In a related development last Friday, the FCC moved to terminate over 2,000 official proceedings that it deemed to have become “dormant” (see DA 25-376).  Our review of the list of affected proceedings revealed only one docket (FCC 05-124) dealing with E-Rate and the Universal Service Fund that had been initiated in 2005 and has been largely inactive for the past decade.

FCC Streamlined Decisions:

The FCC issued another set of “streamlined,” precedent-based appeals and waivers last week.  As with past streamlined decisions, applicants facing similar problems to those addressed in these decisions may garner useful information by carefully reading the additional FCC explanations found in the footnotes.  The original appeal and/or waiver requests can be found online in the FCC’s Search for Filings under Docket 02-6 (E-Rate) or Docket 21-93 (ECF).

What is unique about last week’s decision is that it includes almost 500 waiver approvals on late-filed Form 471s for FY 2025, that had been certified after the March 26th deadline but, within the two-week “grace period” traditionally granted under FCC waiver.  These late-filed applications will now be reclassified as “In-Window” and put into USAC’s PIA review queue.

The following table compares the number of applications received during the regular window with those received within the two-week “grace period.”  It also shows the number of applications whose late-filed application waivers have already been granted in April’s streamlined decisions.

In April’s streamlined decisions (DA 25-353), the FCC:

1. E-Rate Dismissed:
   1. Two Requests for Waiver dismissed as moot where USAC had already approved the underlying funding requests.
   2. One Request for Waiver dismissed to allow for an appeal to be filed with USAC.
2. E-Rate Granted:
   1. Two 2012 Requests for Review and/or Waiver remanded to USAC for reconsideration of the old Two-in-Five Rule.
   2. One 2007 Request for Review and/or Waiver remanded to USAC for the reevaluation of the discount rate.
   3. Three 2006-2008 Requests for Review remanded to USAC for reconsideration of eligible services.
   4. Two Requests for Review or Waiver remanded to USAC for reconsideration of eligible entities.
   5. One Petition for Reconsideration on a late-filed appeal/waiver.
   6. One 2008 Request for Waiver on a ministerial and/or clerical error resulting in the appearance of a 2-in-5 Rule violation.
   7. One 2007 Request for Review remanded to USAC for reconsideration of ineligible costs.
   8. One 2004 Request for Review remanded to USAC for a determination of a consortium’s authority to submit an application.
   9. Five Requests for Waiver on service substitutions.
   10. Two Requests for Waiver based on USAC decisions issued after invoice deadlines.
3. E-Rate Granted in Part:
   1. Two Requests for Review and/or Waiver for cost allocations of non-ancillary ineligible components.
4. E-Rate Denied:
   1. One 2005 Request for Waiver seeking a blanket invoice deadline waiver without a demonstration of special circumstances.
   2. Three Requests for Review regarding categories of service.
   3. Two Requests for Review regarding ineligible services.
   4. Twelve Requests for Review or Waiver on invoice extensions requested after the filing deadline.
   5. One Request for Waiver of a ministerial and/or clerical error for an FRN omitted from a Form 471 application.
   6. One Request for Waiver for equipment that could not be located during an audit.
   7. Two Requests for Review and/or Waiver for service substitutions.