For those unfamiliar with the Form 486, the Form 486 is used to notify USAC that services for a given funding year have started and that you are compliant with the Children’s Internet Protection Act (“CIPA”) as required. The deadline for this form is 120 days from the later of your FCDL date or your service start date. If you fail to file this form timely, you risk losing funding for your approved services. Historically, USAC has sent an Urgent Reminder Letter affording applicants an additional 15 days + 5 days for postal mailing in the form. With the advent of the Form 486 within EPC and the use of email starting in FY 2016, this grace period is now 15 days.
USAC is now prepared to issue Urgent Reminder “Letters” for FY 2016 which will be a notification to the General Contact listed on the Form 471 via email. Those that are not the General Contact will not receive an email, but should be able to retrieve this notification within EPC’s “News”. Due to the volume of letters to be issued, we expect several batches to be issued over the course of the week and then in weekly intervals as applicants miss the 120 day after the FCDL deadline.
As first reported in our newsletter of November 8th, we remind consortium applicants filing Form 486s that they should remember that CIPA compliance, if required, is acknowledged indirectly by certifying that all consortium members have already submitted Form 479s. The Form 479s, certifying each member’s compliance with CIPA, are paper forms collected by the consortium leaders (i.e., not filed with USAC). This collection process needs to occur before the consortia file their Form 486s. Consortia, if audited, must be able to produce those Form 479s.
Upcoming 2017 E-Rate Deadlines:
| February 23 |
Form 486 deadline for FY 2016 funding committed in Wave 18. More generally, the Form 486 deadline is 120 days from the FCDL date or the service start date (often July 1st), whichever is later. This means that Form 486 deadlines for funding commitments received in later waves will follow at roughly one week intervals, including the following February-March deadlines:
Wave 19 02/28/2017
Wave 20 03/07/2017
Wave 21 03/17/2017
Wave 22 03/21/2017
Wave 23 03/28/2017
Applicants missing these (or earlier) deadlines should watch carefully for “Form 486 Urgent Reminder Letters” (actually emails directing the applicants to EPC News Feed items). The Reminders will afford applicants with 15-day extensions from the date of the emails to submit their Form 486s without penalty (see USAC News Brief of November 4th and below summary of USAC News Brief of February 24th.
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| February 27 |
Extended — and effectively final — invoice deadline assigned to FY 2015 recurring service FRNs for approved IDERs granted last year. |