E-rate: Form 470 Deadline and Online Resources

Just a reminder …. Friday, April 1 is the deadline to submit the first form in the E-rate process, Form 470, for the upcoming 2016 Funding Year. The filing window for submitting the second form in the process, Form 471, opened at noon EST on Wednesday, February 3, and will close at 11:59 PM EDT on Friday, April 29. This makes April 1 the deadline to post your Form 470 to the USAC website, meet the 28-day posting requirement for the competitive bidding process, and submit a Form 471 by the filing window closing date. However, we do not recommend waiting until the last day to submit your Form 470! If there are any issues that day, like the E-rate servers are slowed down because it is the last day to submit, or you can’t submit the form due to reasons on your end, like illness, weather, power outage, etc., then you would miss the deadline and lose out on E-rate altogether. So, get your E-rate process started and submit your Form 470 as soon as possible! Do you need help completing your forms? Do you have questions about E-rate? You’re in luck! USAC has posted Special Edition News Briefs with updates about changes that have been made to the 471 since the Window opened. There are two of them that you should read before starting your 471: Feb. 25 and March 18. In addition to instructional PDFs and videos, they have also conducted a series of webinars to help you navigate the E-rate process in the new EPC portal. You can view the recordings of these webinars on the USAC Online Learning Library webpage. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the most recent recordings. USAC has also started up a new blog, File Along With Me, that will take you through the application filing window from beginning to end at a steady pace. If you follow along, read the blog, and take the actions described in each posting, by the close of the window you should end up with a certified FCC Form 471. And more recorded webinars, demos, and training materials are available on the NLC E-rate webpage. If you have any questions or need any assistance with your E-rate forms, please contact Christa Burns, 800-307-2665, 402-471-3107.