Last Week to File 470 for Year 3 E-rate Applications
Message Posted December 13, 1999
If your school or library intends to apply for Year 3 E-rate discounts, this week marks the final week to submit the first form (Form 470). Technically, the very last day to submit the Form 470 and still have one day to review bids, select a vendor and overnight express mail your Form 471 (both form and signature page) is Dec. 21. Due to major overnight delivery problems in previous years, we strongly encourage applicants to NOT wait until Dec. 21, and submit the Form 470 by this Friday, Dec. 17 at the latest. Doing so by Friday will give you a few days to be sure you have all of your paperwork
received at the SLD inside the window.
Please note: For early filers of the Form 470, the 470 Application Receipt Notification Letter contained an incorrect window closing date (listing 01/08/2000). Please be assured that the correct closing date for the 471 Application Window is January 19, 2000. Correction notices were mailed by the SLD to affected filers.
There are only two reasons that an applicant would not need to file a Form 470:
The applicant will be submitting a 471 to apply for discounts for the second or subsequent year of a multi-year contract. The only way this is permissible is if the multi-year contract was covered by a 470 filed in a previous funding year. If you signed a contract after July 10, 1997 without first having requested bids by posting a 470 on the SLD web site, the contract is not considered an existing contract because it was not bid on the E-rate web site and therefore is not E-rate eligible.
The applicant is planning to file a 471 listing a product or service from the state PEPPM contract (www.peppm.org). In this case, the applicant need only submit the 471 for those items.
So far, 1192 Form 470s have been submitted from Pennsylvania, compared to a total 2255 from Year 2.
A few reminders:
Form 471 and the signature/certification page must be RECEIVED at the SLD by 11:59 Jan. 19, 2000 to be considered in the equal application window.
Unless you have a signed, existing contract, tariffed services must be competitively bid each year on the E-rate web site (all telecom services, including local and long distance). To date, the SLD has not recognized multi-year tariffed arrangements. If you have a multi-year tariff, we encourage you to obtain a written contract stating these services. Otherwise, the SLD gives you no options but to re-file the 470 each year to seek bids. (This is a problem that we are trying to address with the SLD, but for, these are the rules).
There is no harm in submitting too many 470s. If you determine that the bids are too high and decide not to sign contracts, the 470 simply dies.
Be sure to save copies of everything you submit.
If you're not sure if an item is E-rate eligible, be sure to list it as a separate funding request on the 471, thus not affecting other funding requests if it is rejected.
You may submit one 470 and one 471, listing all of the services or items on one application, or you may submit several of each form. There is no one-to-one ratio for applications submitted.
Submit your 470 and 471 online. But submitting the 470 online, your 28 day waiting period begins immediately and you automatically pass the minimum processing standards. By submitting the 471 online, you not only pass the minimum processing standards and guarantee that all mathematical calculations are done correctly, but your applications are processed more quickly and you likely will receive your funding commitment letter in an earlier wave.
If you have any questions, please e-mail either myself or call the SLD at 888-203-8100.
-- Julie
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Julie L. Tritt
Executive Policy Specialist
Office of Educational Technology
Pennsylvania Department of Education 333
Market Street, 10th Floor
Harrisburg, PA 17126 Voice: (717) 705-4486
Fax: (717) 787-7222
jtritt@state.pa.us
http://www.l2l.org
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