E-Rate for FY 2024 – First Funding Wave:
Wave 1 for FY 2024 was released on Saturday, April 27th, for $972 million. For the first time in three years, perhaps because of what appears to be somewhat tighter PIA procedures, the first wave failed to break the $1 billion level.
By our calculations, 831 applications, for total requests of $3.23 million, were submitted “Out Of Window” but within the FCC’s traditional two-week grace period. We expect to see the first batch of waiver decisions on these late-filed applications early this week when the FCC releases its streamlined decision order for the month of April.
As a trivial sidenote on late, or almost late, filed applications, USAC’s Open Data files indicate that 22 applications were certified in the last ten minutes of the FY 2024 application window whereas 7 applicants, with slightly slower typing skills, missed the March 27th deadline by less than ten minutes. As of last Friday, USAC’s data indicated that a total of 84 additional applications had been submitted more than two weeks late.
E-Rate for FY 2023:
USAC issued Wave 53 for FY 2023 on Thursday, April 25th, for $6.59 million for six applications. Total funding is $2.59 billion. At this point, USAC has funded 98.1% of the originally submitted applications representing 94.5% of the dollars requested.