There were 26,407 Form 470 competitive bid requests submitted by the FY2018 deadline. This represents a steady pace of participation from FY2017, when taking into consideration the nearly completed phase-out of voice services and the impact of multiyear contracts.
For several years, the count of forms and the number of applicants submitting forms had declined significantly. A big factor in this was the loss of support for telephone service. In FY2016, there were 19,128 applicants who posted Form 470s for voice services. This year, only 5,621 applicants posted Form 470s for these services.
Still, the decline had not been limited to voice. Even Internet access and on-campus networking had shown some decline; however, that seems to have tapered off.
The charts and table below illustrate the count of Forms and applicants submitting Form 470s as broken out into different service types.
