This time of year, many applicants are concerned with conducting a fair and open competitive bidding process for eligible E-rate goods and services, and service providers are trying to respond to as many opportunities as they can. The Form 471 window opened on January 9, and applicants will soon start to file their Form 471 applications by the March 20 deadline.
However, there is another critical deadline that is only weeks away. Applicants and service providers who received FY2010 commitments for Internal Connections projects may have an invoicing deadline of January 30, 2012.
According to a Funds For Learning analysis, 2,591 applicants and 1,126 service providers totaling $207.2 million in committed funds are affected by this looming deadline. To date, a total of $158.4 million has been disbursed, which leaves nearly $50 million that can still be invoiced. Applicants can either pay their service providers in full and request reimbursement through the BEAR process, or request discounted invoices from their service providers, who then invoice USAC for the discounted portion using the SPI process.
- Here are the applicants that have selected to go through the BEAR process, and their utilization analysis to date.
- Here are the service providers that are going through the SPI process, and their utilization analysis to date.
- This report shows the funding requests where no payment method has been selected.
If additional time is required to submit your BEARS or SPIS, an invoice extension request should be submitted before the January 30, 2012 deadline.
