• Form 470 Submission for PY5
• Online Form 471 Enabled for Electronic Signatures
• Upcoming E-rate Deadlines
• Responding to Vendor Form 470 Inquiries

The following is a summary of the E-rate News for the Week of November 19, 2001, prepared by E-Rate Central. Official SLD news appears in the “What’s New!” section of the SLD’s Web site . Additional and archived information appears elsewhere on the E-Rate Central Web site .

Form 470 Submission for PY5

With less than a month to go before the final deadline for posting a Form 470 online, this year’s submissions are well below last year’s total. As of this year’s Thanksgiving break, slightly under 13,000 Form 470s for PY5 have been posted on the SLD Web site. This compares with over 36,000 Form 470s filed for all of PY4. The comparable figures for New York State alone are approximately 1,100 for PY5 and 2,450 for PY4.

This year’s numbers suggest either that most applicants are waiting until the last few weeks to file their Form 470s or that they have no intention of filing at all. Neither is a recommended course of action. As indicated below, the absolute last date for filing a Form 470 online is December 20, 2001. A Form 470 posted on this date would mean that the 28-day posting date would be up on January 17, 2002 — the last day that contracts can be signed and a Form 471 filed for PY5. Please do not wait until the last day!

Applicants who mail their Form 470s to the SLD must recognize that the 28-day posting period does not begin until after SLD data entry. The SLD will try to do this within a week — and has recommended that Form 470s be mailed no later than December 12 — but it makes no guarantees. Anyone who has not yet filed a Form 470 should do so online to start the 28-day posting period immediately.

Online Form 471 Enabled for Electronic Signatures

The SLD’s online system for filing Form 471s was updated this week to accept the use of electronic signatures. Form 470s and Form 471s can now be filed completely online, without the need to mail in the separately signed certification pages.

To use the electronic signature option, a Form 470/471 signer must have been previously assigned a User ID and PIN. Any authorized person, who has previously signed a Form 471 or Form 486 for PY2 or later, can apply online for a User ID and PIN. Details on the use of electronic signatures for E-rate forms, and a link to the PIN Request Area can be found in the Reference Area of the SLD Web Site.

The biggest mistake applicants are making when trying to apply for a PIN online is to reference a Form 471 application number rather than a specific Funding Request Number (“FRN”).

Upcoming E-rate Deadlines

A combination of the recently announced PY3 Form 486 and BEAR deadlines, the PY4 Form 486 deadlines, and the PY5 application window, has established a number of critical dates for E-rate applicants. The following is a list of key deadlines that must be met over the next few months:

Responding to Vendor Form 470 Inquiries

By popular demand, the following suggestions are reprinted (and slightly edited) from last year. The suggestions are in response to a number of questions concerning an applicant’s obligations and responsibilities for responding to sales inquiries from vendors generated as a result of a posted Form 470.

In many cases, vendors are simply using posted Form 470s to expand their prospect lists to which they send general sales material. An applicant receiving general vendor information may learn something by reading it, but is under no obligation to proactively respond.

However, if a vendor responds specifically to a posted request for service, either to ask for more details about service needs or to propose a specific product or service, then the applicant should respond appropriately. Two general principles are important:

The SLD and the FCC are serious about the E-Rate’s competitive bidding requirements; both want to see a fair and open competitive process. The SLD has clearly stated that if they “…determined that the competitive bidding requirements had not been compiled with, the entity’s funding would be in jeopardy.” During the PY3 application cycle, the SLD invalidated over 150 Form 470s and the associated Form 471s. (Note also that many state and local procurement laws require bidding entities to consider all properly submitted bids in response to more formal RFPs.)

E-rate rules do not require applicants to consider only vendors that respond to their Form 470s, nor do the rules require applicants to accept the lowest priced bid. Applicants are free to solicit their own vendors and to accept the “most cost-effective bid.” Although price must be considered a major factor in the selection process, applicants can also consider prior experience, personnel qualifications (including technical excellence), management capability, and environmental objectives.

With these principles in mind, here are a few practical suggestions for responding to vendor inquiries:

• Be polite. This is not an E-rate rule, but is an admirable social grace.
  
  
• Recognize that a vendor can access posted Form 470 information either by viewing a specific applicant’s Form or by downloading summary data for multiple applicants. Vendors using summary data do not know what preferred mode of contact has been specified or any details of posted service requests. In response to an inquiry made on this basis, you might suggest that the vendor review your specific Form 470.
  
  
• If a vendor calls, but your Form 470 indicates that the preferred mode of contact is written (i.e., mail, fax, or e-mail), it is acceptable to simply ask the vendor to respond accordingly.
  
  
• If there is someone else in your organization best equipped to deal with a specific vendor inquiry — perhaps the alternative contact listed in Item 11 — refer the vendor to the correct person.
  
  
• If you have a formal (or even informal) RFP available for a requested service, make sure the vendor is given or can procure a copy.

Keep a file of vendor material and/or a log of vendor inquiries. Even if you don’t select a specific vendor for PY5 services, the vendor’s material may be useful as future needs develop. It also documents a serious effort to respond to vendor inquiries in the spirit of the Form 470 competitive bidding process.