The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) issued the first wave of funding commitments for Funding Year 2019 on April 27, 2019. In the first wave, USAC approved 1,675 funding requests for over 1,000 of California’s school and library applicants, for a total of 14% of all funding requested in California.

The Funding Year 2019 FCC Form 471 application window closed March 27. While the 2019 E-rate program cap was set by the Federal Communications Commission at $4.151 billion, the total demand as of the close of the window was reported by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) as $2.896 billion, well below the cap.

The FCC Form 471 filing window for Funding Year 2019 closed on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. EDT (8:59 p.m. PDT).

In the March 8, 2019 Schools and Libraries News Brief, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) announced the Funding Year 2019 Category 2 budgets, indexed to an inflation factor of 2.2%.

Many public agencies including public schools and libraries utilize the state master contract CALNET 3 for the purchase of broadband and telecommunications services, some of which may be eligible for E-rate discounts.

On January 3, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a limited waiver (DA 19-15 ) for victims of the October 2017 wildfires in eight counties designated by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as eligible for disaster relief.

On January 3, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a limited waiver (DA 19-15 PDF) for victims of the October 2017, wildfires in eight counties designated by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as eligible for disaster relief: Butte, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Sonoma, Lake, Orange, and Yuba.

USAC has announced that the FCC Form 471 filing window for Funding Year 2019 will open on Wednesday, January 16, 2019, at 12:00 noon EST (9:00 a.m. PST) and will close on Wednesday, March 27, 2019, at 11:59 p.m. EDT (8:59 p.m. PDT). FCC Form 471 applications must be certified within an applicant’s E-rate Productivity Center (“EPC”) portal within these dates in order to be considered to be filed “within window.”

On November 30th, USAC released updated FCC Form 471 Bulk Upload Templates that allow filers to upload Category One and Category Two service information in bulk to their Form 471 applications. The templates are available on the USAC website and will be available in EPC when the application filing window opens. Please note the following:

On November 16, the Federal Communications Commission released the Eligible Services List (“ESL”) for Funding Year 2019. While there are no significant changes to E-rate eligible services from Funding Year 2018, the FCC did make clarifications in the following areas: