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Few Days Remain to Submit Year 5 Form 470 for E-rate
Message Posted December 12, 2001
If your school or library has not yet submitted the Form 470 for E-rate, you should do so ASAP. The Form 470 lists services or items that a school or library would like to competitively bid, and thus have them be eligible for E-rate discounts. If posted online by Tuesday, December 18, applicants will have only 2 days after the mandatory 28 day posting (waiting) period to evaluate proposals, sign contracts and complete and submit the second form, the Form 471 by January 17, 2002. So don't wait until next week.... file your remaining 470's in the next day or two.
Important reminders:
1) All 470's must now be posted online, as it is basically too late to file the Form 470 manually (submitting the actual form via the mail) because the SLD usually takes several days to data-enter the information, and thus the 28 day clock would not begin until the SLD completes the data entry phase, pushing you outside the Jan. 17 window.
2) Unless you are have obtained a PIN and plan to certify your form online, the signature and certification pages must be submitted manually, but only required to
be postmarked by January 17, 2002.
3) 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). The SLD does not recognize multi-year tariffed arrangements.
4) Don't forget that if there is a chance you will want to upgrade your service during the next funding year, always describe the services you want as, "56K or faster" or "T-1 or faster", etc.
5) 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.
6) After you post your Form 470, go back to the SLD website and "search posted" 470's to be sure it was submitted and to determine your Allowable Contract Date (29th day after 470 posting). This date will be shown at the top of your posted 470. How? Go to: http://www.sl.universalservice.org/ and click on "view forms" at the right. Then click on "search posted."
7) Don't forget that you cannot receive E-rate discounts on a service or contract unless a Form 470 has been posted requesting bids on that service. Even if you have no competition in your area, all services must be posted to the SLD's E-rate web site using a 470.
8) 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. Also, if you already have submitted a 470 and now realize that there are additional items that you
wanted to list, simply post a new 470 for those services.
If you have any questions, please e-mail me.
-- Julie
Julie Tritt Schell
Director, Office of Educational Technology
Pennsylvania Department of Education
(717) 705-4486
(717) 787-7222 - fax
www.L2L.org
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