In This Week's Issue:
»	FY 2007 Funding Status
»	E-Rate Updates and Reminders

E-Rate Central News for the Week
November 26, 2007

The E-Rate Central News for the Week is prepared by E-Rate Central. E-Rate Central specializes in providing consulting, compliance, and forms processing services to E-rate applicants and service providers. To learn more, contact us by phone (516-832-2880) or e-mail. Additional E-rate information is located on the E-Rate Central Web site.

FY 2007 Funding Status
Two FY 2007 waves are scheduled this week. Wave 30 will be released on Tuesday, November 27th for about $7 million, and Wave 31 will be released on Thursday, November 29th for about $9 million. Together, these waves will bring the cumulative national FY 2007 funding total to $1.75 billion. Internal Connections funding is still being provided only at discount levels of 83% and above.

We suspect that the two waves this week reflect, not only last week's Thanksgiving break, but an earlier cutoff for the processing of Wave 30 to implement the SLD's decision to deny FY 2007 Internal Connections funding at all discount levels below 80% as of that wave.

Funding of 80-82% Priority 2 requests for FY 2007 currently remains an open issue - with 80% looking increasingly doubtful. As of Wave 29 (ignoring Priority 2 requests of less than 80% that will be denied beginning with Wave 30), pending funding for FY 2007 is as shown below:

Excluding reserves and administrative expenses, there is currently less than $1.2 billion available for additional funding (the difference between the $2.9 billion funding pool for FY 2007 and the almost $1.75 billion already awarded). At the moment, the remaining funding doesn't even quite cover Internal Connections down to the current 83% threshold. Getting to the 80% threshold would require additional denials of over $350 million, or over 22% of the pending requests. This would be a much higher denial percentage than has been the norm so far this year.

E-Rate Updates and Reminders
The Form 471 application window for FY 2008 opened November 7, 2007, and will close at 11:59 p.m. EST on Thursday, February 7, 2008.

FY 2007 Form 486 deadlines (for services begun July 1, 2007) for December are as follows:

In deference to Thanksgiving, the SLD did not issue a News Brief last week.