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Have You Been Contacted by a Telecom Wholesaler/Bid Consolidator?
Message Posted December 4, 2008

I've received numerous calls and e-mails over the last month from applicants who, in response to their Form 470 postings, have received e-mails from companies acting as 'bid consolidating services' or 'telecom wholesalers' or 'telecom brokers.'

These companies (four different ones that I'm aware of) are offering to help the applicant select a telecom provider (by gathering the applicant's recent telecom invoices, providing these invoices to telecom providers to review, collecting all providers' responses, and assisting the applicant with the selection process.) 
From what I can tell, these companies represent a certain set of telecom providers and are possibly receiving a commission if one of "their providers" is selected.

Some applicants also have been pressured into believing that they must use the services of the telecom broker because the school or library filed a Form 470 for telecom services.

IMPORTANT
1) These solicitations are NOT considered bids and applicants are NOT required to respond.  We have confirmed this with the SLD.
2) An applicant cannot turn over bidding and bid evaluation responsibilities to service providers or their agents. If you have already agreed to work with one of these bid consolidating companies, you should have all vendor quotes provided directly to you by the telecom provider (not the broker) and you, as the applicant, should do all of the bid evaluation (considering not only these bids, but all bids received).

Here are the links to the general SLD advice about the competitive bidding process.  http://www.universalservice.org/sl/applicants/step03/run-open-fair-competition.aspx.  Specifically, the SLD states, “Applicants may not delegate the evaluation role to anyone associated with a service provider.”  Also, with respect to conflict of interest, the SLD states on the same page, “For example, a conflict of interest exists when the applicant's consultant is associated with a service provider that is selected and is involved in determining the services sought by the applicant and the selection of the applicant's service provider(s).”

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Julie Tritt Schell

717-730-7133 - o
717-730-9060 - f
jtschell@comcast.net
www.e-ratepa.org
Penn*link

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