The FCC Wireline Bureau agreed to fund E-rate projects at 29 scho...
The FCC Wireline Bureau agreed to fund E-rate projects at 29 schools and libraries that had been turned down by the Universal Service Administrative Co. (USAC). The bureau said USAC used a standard that wasn’t in effect when it…
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
rejected the projects because of price. Before funding year 2004, the FCC followed its 1999 Tennessee Order, which said price should be an important factor in evaluating bids but other factors also can be taken into consideration to evaluate whether an offering is cost-effective. In funding year 2004, the FCC released the Ysleta Order which said price has to be the primary factor. But the 29 applicants filed for funding years 2000-2003, all prior to the Ysleta Order’s stricter requirements, the bureau said. “We find that USAC improperly denied petitioners’ funding requests because it erroneously required petitioners to give more weight to price in the competitive bidding process than to any other factor,” the bureau said in an Aug. 15 order: “These petitioners filed their applications and initiated their competitive bidding process before funding year 2004. As such, USAC should have applied the standard the Commission articulated in the Tennessee Order, rather than the standard from the Ysleta Order that it actually applied.” The 29 institutions that appealed are spread across the country and P.R. and include school districts in Boston, San Diego and Cleveland.