The Schools and Libraries Division has implemented a procedure designed to make it easier for E-rate applicants to obtain Federal Communications Commission Registration Numbers for all of their entities.
The Schools and Libraries Division has implemented a procedure designed to make it easier for E-rate applicants to obtain Federal Communications Commission Registration Numbers for all of their entities.
As of November 1, all E-rate program participants, including applicants, service providers and consultants were required to obtain an FCC Registration Number. The FCC said applicants were also expected to obtain a number for every school or library site. The SLD had said at the time that it would work to create a tool to make it easier for applicants that had a large number of school sites or library branches to obtain the numbers more easily.
The SLD provided an additional incentive to use its tool by announcing that applicants that use it to will not be required to separately supply their FCC numbers to the Program Integrity Assurance department when their applications are reviewed because the numbers will already be entered into the SLD's data base. Currently, the FCC Registration Number is not required for any E-rate program application form.
The SLD said it will process requests for FCC numbers in two waves: applicants submitting a request by midnight on January 15, 2005 will be notified by letter of their numbers by early February. Applicants that apply by February 25, 2005, will receive their notification by mid-March. Applicants who do not submit their requests by February 25 will be required to obtain their numbers one at a time through the FCC's own registration process, which does not include a provision for bulk registration.
The SLD site describes how applicants can submit a comma-delimited file containing certain fields and required pieces of information to obtain the numbers. Applicants are required to produce addresses, phone and fax numbers of their sites, in addition to contact information and the applicant's Taxpayer Identification Number. The SLD also has built a tool that will enable an applicant to enter entity numbers one at a time and prepopulate fields with information that is already in the SLD data base.
