BENTON'S COMMUNICATIONS-RELATED HEADLINES for OCTOBER 15, 2004 Today, the Progress & Freedom Foundation is hosting a discussion at Congress on "reinventing" the FCC. This weekend, CPSR meets in Washington, DC.
(From Benton) UPDATE ON FUNDING FREEZE AND POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS What are the possible outcomes of the current E-Rate funding freeze? E-Rate Central offer three possibilities: 1) Under political pressure, the decision to define Funding Commitment Decision Letters (FCDLs) as legal obligations requiring cash on-hand might be reversed. Although viewed as a low probability, this would permit the immediate resumption of funding. Since the E-Rate administrator has continued its review of applications since the freeze began, a large initial wave of commitments (more than $300 million) would be expected. 2) A related possibility being given serious consideration is to weaken the language of the current FCDLs to make it clear that the funding being awarded is dependent upon the availability of cash at the time invoices are filed. If the administrator can issue weaker FCDLs that are not legally considered obligations, then the funding waves could again be resumed much as before. The major concern with this approach is whether applicants and/or service providers will be willing to accept these authorizations as the basis for the initiation of new projects and/or the extension of discount-dependent credits. 3) If no changes are made, then the resumption of funding will depend on the availability of uncommitted cash. The administrator has been actively working to free up earlier commitments by encouraging applicants to file Form 500s to cancel existing funding awards that will not be used. Additional uncommitted cash is expected to be generated after October 29th, the invoice deadline for recurring services, to the extent that applicants do not actually use all the funds awarded for FY 2003. The primary source of new cash, however, are contributions that flow into the Universal Service Fund on a quarterly basis - a flow that has unfortunately been reduced by FCC actions as recently as last month. In this case, the funding schedule will be tied primarily to new cash inflows and may require new rules and procedures to establish funding priorities. [SOURCE: E-Rate Central] http://www.e-ratecentral.com/archive/News/News2004/weekly_news_40.asp#b1 FEDS DEBUT ERATE ELIGIBILITY DATABASE Removing uncertainty about what's allowed and what's not, eRate applicants now can search for eligible products in a new online database that was created by the FCC. The database is part of a pilot project intended to benefit all eRate stakeholders by making the program simpler and possibly limiting waste, fraud, and abuse in the program. [SOURCE: eSchool News, AUTHOR: Cara Branigan] http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=5322 Forwarded by Bonnie Bracey [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
