Year 8 E-rate Funding Letters Delayed
Message Posted June 14, 2005
Many of you have been wondering why your Year 8 funding commitment decision letter has not yet arrived, because in previous years, we’ve had more than half of our applicants funded by now. We have asked the FCC and SLD, but no one will give an official answer for the delay.
We have been told that the Year 8 funding waves will begin in June, and the waves will come weekly for the first several cycles until they’re caught up. As soon as I receive notice of the first wave, I’ll send it to the listserve.
Unfortunately, what this means is that even if FCDLs arrive next week, it will be nearly impossible for vendors to begin discounting bills in July because it still takes about 4 weeks for the SLD to process submitted 486s. If you have recurring services and are dependent on E-rate discounts, you may want to contact your service provider to make arrangements. In most cases, vendors are agreeable to terms where the applicant can pay 100% of the bill, then the service provider will issue a retro-active credit after the 486 approval letter has been received.
Much Improved 471 Status Tool
Applicants that are interested in knowing where their 471 currently stands now have much greater access to that information. On the SLD’s website – www.sl.universalservice.org
– on the left toolbar there is a feature called, “Form 471 Application Status.” Previously, this tool just let you know if your application has been completed, certified, or if an FCDL had been issued, but now the tool gives you the status of all 471s associated with your entity, down to this level of detail (terms further defined on the website):
Cancelled
Complete
Incomplete
Certified In Window
Certified Out of Window
Initial Review
Available for Final Review
Available for Quality Assurance
Quality Assurance 1
Quality Assurance 2
Held for Contact Person
Held for Policy Guidance
FCDL Issued xx/xx/xxxx
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me at jtschell@comcast.net
Julie Tritt Schell
jtschell@comcast.net
(717) 730.7133 (voice)
(717) 730.9060 (fax)
| 
Back to 2005 Archives Main