The following is a summary of E-rate news for the week of December 14, 1998. Official SLC news appears in the "What's New!" section of the SLC's web site.

• The board of the SLC extended the application window for the 1999-2000 funding period from 80 to 100 days. The window is now scheduled to close at 11:59 p.m. on March 11, 1999. This is the last day on which a Form 471 can be filed to qualify an applicant for E-rate discounts in the next funding period.

The window has been open since December 1. As of the beginning of this week, approximately 2,000 Form 470s had been filed either electronically or by mail. Applicants are reminded that to apply for funding for the next fiscal year, both Form 470 and Form 471 must be filed within the window, allowing at least 28 days between the two. This means that the latest possible date for filing and posting a Form 470, allowing only one day both to sign new contracts and to file a Form 471, will be February 10. Please remember that the filing date for a Form 470 is the date it is posted onto the SLC web site. Filings made by mail, rather than online, must be timed to allow for delivery and data entry. E-Rate Central strongly recommends that Form 470s be filed before yearend (which, for many schools means, before the school break next week).

Applicants are reminded that to receive discounts on an E-rate eligible service next year, an underlying contract must be signed and must be listed on a Form 471 filed within the window period. This may require a change in the way many schools and libraries have traditionally executed year-to-year contracts.

• Some of the uncertainty regarding which applicants would receive discounts on their internal connections services this year was resolved earlier this week when the SLC announced that applicants with discount levels below 50% would definitely not be funded in the current period.

Please note that this does NOT mean that all applicants with discount levels above 50% will be funded for internal connections. The exact cutoff discount level is still unknown due, in part, to the necessity of maintaining reserves against several unresolved funding issues. At the moment, funding commitments are being made only at the 90% level (see below).

• Wave 3 of the Funding Commitment Decisions Letters, which had been expected to be mailed as early as last Saturday, is now scheduled for release on December 21. This will be a small wave representing only about 1,000 applications, still with no internal connection approvals below the 90% level. [In our view, a better designation for this and the previous waves might have been waves 1a, 1b, and 1c.]

The remainder of the funding commitments will come in three or more waves expected after the Christmas holiday. The final wave may not be released until late in January. Almost surely, this schedule will mean that the current deadline for filing BEAR forms for reimbursements, now set as January 31, 1999, will have to be delayed until at least late February.

One implication of the SLC announcement that internal connections below 50% would not be funded is that low discount applicants may now receive FCD Letters somewhat earlier in the wave process (since the SLC will no longer have to wait to see if funding will be available for these applications).

• Testing of the online Form 471 filing system has been scheduled for the end of December. The 471 system is expected to be operational in January. The SLC is counting on the online system to speed the processing of 471 applications for the new funding period. Online submission, however, will probably still require the separate mailing of:

1. An aggregate discount calculation worksheet (required to support Block 4);

2. Supporting contract information and/or the currently optional Pre-Discount Cost Calculation Grid; and

3. The signature page.

• Tuesday was the last formal board meeting of the Schools and Libraries Corporation. The SLC used the meeting to approve its merger with USAC (the Universal Service Administrative Company) as directed by the FCC. Management and staff of the existing SLC will be absorbed into the merged company and should be largely unaffected. Ultimately, the merger should consolidate, simplify, and speed the processing of E-rate discount invoices. No decision has yet been made as to the name of the new entity.