We've just added a new feature to our website that will give you an at-a-glance summary of the E-rate program. The E-rate Summary can be found on our homepage and features a summary of pending, committed, and rejected requests for recent funding years. (You'll need Flash Player to view the summary)
The E-rate Summary reports the numbers each day from the SLD's Data Retrieval Tool (or DRT). For 2009, you'll notice that (as of today) over $5 billion has been requested. This amount will change each day for some time to come. The SLD reviews and revises applications for typos and requests made in error. We noticed what appears to be a really big error in one funding request in Arizona, by the way. Also, some applicants haven't yet certified their Forms 471 and some applicants will cancel requests through the RAL and PIA processes.
The SLD will probably issue a Demand Estimate for FY 2009 within the next several weeks, which is the SLD's best estimation about the amount of funding that is requested for the year. The numbers reported in the SLD's DRT aren't meant to be a demand estimate in itself, since there will be a lot of fluctuation in the numbers reported from day to day for the next few months.
