On February 28, 2019, the FCC issued relief for 18 E-rate applicants who were assigned an incorrect service implementation deadline for FY 2016 and 2017 special construction funding requests by a system error in the E-rate Productivity Center (EPC). This resulted in USAC’s invoicing system assigning an incorrect invoicing deadline to these same applicants. The FCC determined that in order to “…prevent the affected applicants from the hardship of having their funding subject to recovery or their invoices rejected by USAC as a result of their reliance on these incorrect deadlines, on our own motion, we grant a limited, one-time waiver of the Commission’s special construction service implementation deadline. Specifically, we provide relief to applicants that: (1) received the incorrect special construction service implementation deadline on either their funding commitment decision letters (FCDLs) or revised FCDLs (RFCDLs) for funding years 2016 or 2017 due to this system error; and (2) did not complete special construction by the correct deadline, but did meet the incorrect deadline generated by USAC’s systems (Affected Applicants)…”
According to a Funds For Learning analysis, the FY 2016 and 2017 funding requests for these affected applicants totaled $5.37 million and $4.75 million has been disbursed as of February 28, 2019. The FCC Order can be viewed here.
