The E-rate program has many deadlines of which applicants and service providers should be aware. For example, the Form 471 filing window changes each year, installation deadlines are based on when Internal Connections projects are committed, and invoicing deadlines must not be missed. The normal FY2013 Priority 1 invoicing deadline should have been October 28, 2014. However, according to my data analysis, the SLD’s Data Retrieval Tool (DRT) is showing that the deadline has been pushed back until October 28, 2015, affecting 98,352 funding requests totaling $1.7 billion.
This deadline extension seems to have arrived unannounced – another good reason for applicants and service providers to monitor their funding request activity on a regular basis.
