The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) has announced the annual E-rate application FCC Form 471 filing window for Funding Year 2020. It will open at 9:00 AM PST on Wednesday, January 15, 2020, and close at 8:59 p.m. PDT on Wednesday, March 25, 2020. All applicants who are seeking E-rate funding for eligible services delivered between July 1, 2020, and June 30, 2021, must file their annual FCC Form 471 funding requests in USAC’s E-rate Productivity Center (EPC) online portal by the March 25 deadline.

On Tuesday, December 3, 2019, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued an Order at https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-acts-speed-deployment-wi-fi-schools-and-libraries outlining the rules for a permanent Category Two funding mechanism for eligible schools and libraries. Category Two services enable the distribution of a broadband signal on a school’s campus, commonly known as “WiFi.”

The K12 High Speed Network has two new resources to assist schools in learning E-rate program requirements and completing the annual application and funding process. The E-Rate Training Roadmap and Resource Guide at https://www.k12hsn.org/resources/erate/training will assist schools through each step of the E-rate funding process from start to finish and provides links to additional training resources, including webinars, guides, and videos published by the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC), California Department of Education (CDE), and K12HSN.

As of October 11, 2019, the Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) has opened the Administrative Window for updating entity profile information in the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC) portal. Profile information includes an entity's classification, address, enrollment, National School Lunch Program information, and Urban/Rural status and is the basis of the discount calculation in the FCC Forms 471. USAC provides this courtesy update window each fall prior to the opening of the annual FCC Form 471 filing window. Applicants should carefully monitor and/or update their entity profiles from now until early next year at which time USAC will lock the data in EPC until the FCC Form 471 application window closes.

The deadline for delivery and installation of non-recurring services such as Category One broadband installation and Category Two Internal Connections is generally September 30, following the close of the funding year. Applicants with funding requests that contain non-recurring products or services that have not yet been delivered or installed must start working now on filing the FCC Form 500 to request USAC to extend the service delivery deadline and report extended contract end dates.

Henry Danielson, Tech Director at Coast USD tells K12HSN staff how the network monitoring tools made available through the TAPD program has helped him monitor the performance of the school's network and assess network vulnerabilities.

On August 2, 2019, the FCC released (DA 19-738) seeking comment on the proposed eligible services list (ESL) for the E-Rate program for funding year 2020.

The July 24, 2019, E-rate News Flash contained information regarding the Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on continuing E-rate Category Two budgets. Interested parties are encouraged to file comments in the FCC's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) under proceeding 13-184 by August 16, 2019, and reply comments by September 3, 2019. Parties may also view posted comments in EFCS by doing a search in ECFS under proceeding number 13-184.

In 2015 the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) initiated the five-year Category Two budget test program which established a per student/per school five-year funding allocation to help schools purchase equipment and services necessary to distribute the Internet on a school campus, commonly known as internal connections or WiFi.

USAC has announced the USAC annual fall applicant trainings. The two-day sessions, available to attendees free of charge, start with an optional half-day afternoon session targeted to beginners followed by a full-day training that includes separate breakout sessions for beginners and for more advanced users.