E-rate Update - SLC Board Meeting Notes
Message Posted January 27, 1998
Yesterday, January 27, I attended the board meeting of the Schools and Libraries Corporation (SLC) in Washington, D.C., and obtained the following valuable tidbits of information.
Website to Open on Friday, January 30
As you already know, the biggest news to come from the meeting was the announcement that the SLC Official Website will go operational on Friday, January 30. If you go to the site prior to Friday (and I encourage you to do so) you will find a reference section which includes website instructions, among other things. Starting Friday, the site will be open each day from 5:00 a.m. to midnight, eastern standard time, and will be down for the other five hours for maintenance. The site is set to accomodate 1000 simultaneous users. According to my calculations, that sets the last day for the initial 75-day window to be April 14, 1998.
Grandfathering Existing Contracts
If you would like to sign contracts prior to the opening of the website, thus making them binding, pre-existing contracts that then are not required to be competitively bid during the first year of the program, you must sign those contracts before the close of business on Thursday, January 29, 1998. This may be the case if you have any informal service agreements (such as for tariffs and long distance services) that you would like to formalize, or if you would like to sign any contract for new service.
Key Documents Slated to be Released this Week
The SLC indicated they will release the following important documents in the next few days. Of course, when they are released, we will e-mail them to you and have them posted on the PDE E-rate website. They are: 1) Clients' Commonly Asked Questions - Set III 2) Fact Sheet on Wide Area Networks and Internal Connections 3) Cost Allocation Guidelines. This document will clearly state how you should allocate discounts for a service or connection that contains both ineligible and eligible components. 4) Billed Entity Fact Sheet 5) Eligible Service/Equipment Chart. This document will be the definitive list of what services and equipment are eligible for discounts.
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