News of the Week

E-Rate for FY 2024:

Wave 22 for FY 2024 was released on Thursday, September 19th, for $30.0 million.  Total funding is now $2.23 billion.  Currently, USAC has funded 93.7% of the originally submitted applications, representing 74.7% of the dollars requested.

The Form 484 Part 1 window for the FCC’s Cybersecurity Pilot Program opened last Tuesday, September 17th.  As discussed in our newsletter of August 26, the Form 484 Part 1 will serve as an initial screening mechanism for participation in the Pilot.  We expect only a subset of the applicants submitting this first form to be selected by the FCC to participate in the Pilot itself.  Those selected will then be able to file the remaining forms: (a) the Form 470 to initiate competitive bidding for Pilot equipment and services; (b) the Form 484 Part 2 to provide more detailed information on their Pilot plans; and (c), the Form 471 to apply for actual Pilot funding.

To access and file the Form 484 Part 1 (“Form 484-1”), applicants must log into the EPC portal.  From the applicant’s main page, click on the “waffle” in the upper righthand corner and select “Cybersecurity Pilot Program.”

This will bring up the welcome page for the new “CBR” portion of the EPC portal from which an applicant can initiate the Form 484-1 filing.

The first part of the Form 484-1 begins with the “Basic Information” section.  This section will have been already completed with information carried over from E-rate.  A CBR form number will have already been assigned to the Form 484-1.

The first step in the Form 484-1 process is to complete the “Participant Selection” selection.  This is different from the E-rate process in that a given billed entity — a school district or library system for example — may apply for all, or just a subset, of its members.  The choice at this stage, therefore, is to “Add all entities” or just “Add specific entities.”  This option may be particularly relevant for consortia who may be applying on behalf of only some of its members.  In such a case, participating consortium members must remember that they cannot also apply separately for participation in the Pilot.

The remainder of the Form 484-1 deals with the proposed “Cybersecurity Plan” and is broken into six subsections beginning with series of questions on the “Proposed Plan.”

Many of the Plan fields involve simple checkoff boxes or pulldowns.  Others, such as the “Executive Summary” shown above, require more extensive responses.  In the latter cases, text can be entered directly into the form (limited to 5,000 characters) and/or uploaded as a separate file.

To upload information, either to add to a text field or to provide other information, click on: (1) “Supporting Documentation;” (2) “Add Row;” and (3), “EDIT” to add a “Description,” pick a “Category” (email, file, or image), drag in the upload file.

Completing the Form 484-1 requires a great deal of information, some of which you may want to cross-reference with other fields.  One of the more important fields that may require more discussion elsewhere is 5.4.a. on costs, as shown below.

Our suggestion is to look through the entire form first rather than attempting to work through it sequentially as it is presented in EPC.  A Blank Form 484 Part 1 has been posted on our website.

The long delayed E-rate Form 470 for FY 2025 became available Thursday, September 19th.  Prior to this time, applicants seeking new services for FY 2025 could have used the older FY 2024 version to initiate bidding for traditional services; the new FY 2025 includes dropdowns for newer services and supports an important new feature.

Requests for Category 1 services in the FY 2025 Form 470, as shown below, now include checkoffs for both Wi-Fi on school buses and Wi-Fi hotspots.  Wi-Fi on school buses became eligible in FY 2024 but was not listed as an explicit option in last year’s Form 470.  Hotspots, newly eligible in FY 2025, are now also listed.

To request either service, simply check the appropriate service above, then complete the detailed information below as to quantity and bandwidth.

The other important change in the FY 2025 Form 470 is the ability to add an RFP document to an existing Form 470.  This ability was allowed in the past, but only if at least one document had been appended to the Form 470 when it was first created.  Now, as a “Related Action,” you can:

The instructions for adding an RFP (or any additional information, such as Q&A responses) are in the following section.  Note that they include a question as to whether the new document constitutes a “substantial” change to information provided in the original Form 470.  If “Yes,” the system will then add an additional 28 days to the Allowable Contract Date.  Because neither USAC nor the FCC has ever adequately defined “substantial,” it is usually safest to check “Yes,” accept the additional 28-day wait, and avoid future arguments with PIA.

Upcoming Dates:

FY 2025 Eligible Services List Reply Comment:

With everything else going on in E-rate and related programs this year, few parties decided to comment on the FCC’s proposed Eligible Services List  (“ESL”) for FY 2025 (DA 24‑743).  As noted in our newsletter of September 2nd, only a few parties filed initial comments last month.  In our view, the most important comments had been filed by the State E-Rate Coordinators’ Alliance (“SECA”) arguing for the eligibility of advanced firewalls for FY 2025 to complement the FCC’s new, but limited, Cybersecurity Pilot Program.

Reply comments filed last week, only by E-Rate Central, strongly supported SECA’s position stressing the point that the proposed ESL for FY 2025, as it has in recent years, limited “basic firewall” service only to Category 1 while effectively indicating that “firewalls,” without being further defined, were eligible as Category 2.  The reply comments argued that making more advanced firewalls eligible under Category 2, for which funding is capped, could benefit all E-rate applicants while preserving limited Pilot funding for other cybersecurity products and services.

FCC Streamlined ECF Decisions:

Last week, the FCC issued a small set of midmonth “streamlined,” precedent-based appeals and waivers dealing only with ECF applications.  As with past streamlined decisions, applicants facing similar problems as 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 21-93.

In these streamlined decisions (DA 24-961), the FCC granted:

• One Request for Waiver for ministerial and clerical errors on ECF invoicing remanding the issue back to USAC for further review.
• Six Requests for Waiver to extend the ECF invoice deadlines for the first and second application windows because the applicant or service provider was unable to timely file due to personnel changes or administrative issues.

USAC’s Cybersecurity Pilot Program Newsletter dated September 16, 2024, highlighted the opening of the Form 484 Part 1 application window on September 17th.  As resources for filers, the newsletter points to the FCC Form 484 Part 1 User Guide and a series of USAC’s past and future webinars.

The most interesting aspect of last week’s newsletter was a brief note indicating that as the result of several late-filed corrections to the FCC’s Cyber Pilot order, certification of the Form 484 Part 1 applications will await an FCC notice of the effective date of those corrections.  In the meantime — and despite the announced close of the application window on November 1st — applicants can complete their Form 484 Part 1s but cannot yet certify them.

Last week’s newsletter also discusses:

• The management of Pilot program user permissions in EPC.
• A reminder that applicants on Red Light status as of September 17th are not eligible for the Pilot program.
• Upcoming USAC webinars and online “office hours.”
• Pilot program resources including the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency website and the Department of Education Cybersecurity Preparedness website.

Another important link in the newsletter is to the FCC’s Cybersecurity webpage that, in turn, includes a link to the FCC’s FAQs.  The FAQs are particularly important to understanding the Pilot because they are continually being updated as the FCC clarifies various aspects of the program.  When viewing the FAQs, it is best to review them all by clicking the “Expand All” link or downloading the Full List of FAQs in PDF format.  The most recent updates to the FCC’s FAQ list are marked with an asterisk.