E-Rate Program
Overview
https://www.fcc.gov/general/e-rate-schools-libraries-usf-program
https://www.usac.org/sl/default.aspx
Purpose
The E-Rate program helps schools and libraries obtain affordable broadband. Eligible schools, school districts, and libraries may apply individually or as part of a consortium.
Eligibility
Funding may be requested under two categories of services: telecommunications, telecommunications services and Internet access; and internal connections, basic maintenance of internal connections, and managed internal broadband services.
The eRate program funding process is easy to describe but the details involved with each step can be burdensome. Many school and library districts often hire consultants who specialize in the FCC’s respective funding programs. Do your homework, vet your potential consultant well.
• Initiate a competitive bidding among service providers or venders
• Select a winning service provider/vender
• Apply for discounts therapist on the districts poverty level
• Participate in your application review with the agency
• The service provider/vendor does the work, gets paid
Discounts for support depend on the level of poverty and whether the school or library is located in an urban or rural area. The discounts range from 20 percent to 90 percent of the costs of eligible services. E-Rate program funding is based on demand up to an annual established cap.
Amount Available
Discount; $4,151,395 [funding cap for Funding Year 2019; cap for Funding Year 2020 not yet available]
Contact Website
https://www.fcc.gov/general/e-rate-schools-libraries-usf-program
Contact Information:
Telecommunications Access Policy Division
Tel. (202) 418-7400, Fax (202) 418-7361
Rural Digital Opportunity Fund and 5G Fund (RDOF)
Overview
Descended from the Connect America Fund, RDOF funds the construction and operation of telecommunications and broadband networks. The goal of the program is to ensure rural Americans reasonably comparable telecommunications services at comparable rates that are on par with urban consumers.
Purpose
The program fulfills this universal service goal by allowing eligible carriers who serve these areas to recover some of their costs from the federal Universal Service Fund. Some might consider the downside to this goal Is the way we endeavor to reach it. Roughly two-thirds of the budget for this fund is going to the usual suspects – the huge cable telecom companies – in a way that ensures these companies don’t have competition in their territories.
Eligibility
This next fiscal year the FCC will award about one-third its monies through reverse auctions. Reverse auctions, version 1.0, debuted in 2018. What’s good is that smaller ISPs, co-ops, and municipalities can compete in this process.
Carol Mattey, Principal, Mattey Consulting LLC and former FCC Deputy Bureau Chief, simplifies a complex procedure. “The FCC analyzes various rural areas of the country where they would like to have broadband. They establish a price point that is the most they want to pay a provider to deploy broadband. Assume it’s $1 million. But rather than having each bidder breathlessly out-bid each other, each bidder says what’s the least of amount of money they want to spend to deploy to that area, starting at $1 million.”
One bidder starts at $900,000,000, the next comes in at $850,000,000, and so forth. When it goes down as far as I can, low bidder wins. But remember, this is a watered down description. For all of the details, visit the FCC’s website.
Amount Available
Discount; $4,151,395 [funding cap for Funding Year 2019; cap for Funding Year 2020 not yet available]
Contact Website
Lifeline
Overview
The FCC’s Lifeline $9.25 per month subsidy started as a way to ensure low-income people had basic telephone service come hell or high water. The Obama Administration expanded it to give recipients the option to get telephone or broadband.
Purpose
However, there’s no way $9.25 buys poor people anything more than a cheap mobile phone and an inadequate data plan. Furthermore, communities need high-quality broadband infrastructure and services, not inadequate subsidies for neglected out-of-date technology. The pressure in Congress to raise this subsidy to $50 a month, which does address the affordability issue.
Eligibility
Providers of voice and broadband service, either wireless of wireline, that become “eligible telecommunications carriers” and join the program. Prospective Lifeline subscribers can apply and find more information at www.checklifeline.org.
Contact Website
Announcements for Lifeline service providers can be found at https://www.usac.org/lifeline/contact-us/announcements/. Or www.checkLifeline.org.
https://www.usac.org/lifeline/
Contact Information:
Prospective Lifeline subscribers can apply and find more information at www.checklifeline.org. Announcements for Lifeline service providers can be found at https://www.usac.org/lifeline/contact-us/announcements/. Or www.checkLifeline.org.
Rural Health Care (RHC) Program
Overview
The Rural Heath Care Program (RHCP), originally Healthcare Connect Fund Program, provides a flat 65% discount on an array of communications services to both individual rural health care providers and consortia. Consortia may include urban healthcare providers as long as the consortium is minimum of 51% rural participants.
The RHC Program provides funding through two programs: the Telecommunications (Telecom) Program and the Healthcare Connect Fund Program. The Telecom Program ensures that rural health care providers pay no more than their urban counterparts for eligible telecommunications services. Services include Internet access, dark fiber leases, business data, and private carriage services, and funding for construction of health care provider-owned communications facilities.
Purpose
The grants boost healthcare providers’ fiber broadband and provide patients with tablets and other equipment to facilitate telehealth, but they fail to provide broadband to private neighbors and homes. Giving homes telehealth without reliable, affordable Internet access is like giving people boots, telling them to pull themselves up by their bootstraps, but not giving them straps. So the question is, what’s the grant solution in your plan to the lack of broadband to the home?
Eligibility
To qualify for one of these grants, yours must be one of the following types of facilities:
- A post-secondary educational institution offering healthcare instruction, such as teaching hospitals or medical schools,
- A community health center or health center providing healthcare to migrants,
- A local health department or agency,
- A community mental health center,
- A not-for-profit hospital,
- A rural health clinic,
- A dedicated emergency room of a rural for-profit hospital
- A skilled nursing facility (SNF), or
A consortium of health care providers (HCPs) that includes at least one of the facilities mentioned in above (HCF Program only)
Contact Website
https://www.usac.org/rural-health-care
Connect America Fund (CAF II)
Overview
The Connect America Fund Phase II (Phase II) is part of the Commission’s reform and modernization of its universal service support programs. In 2018, the Commission conducted an auction (Auction 903) to allocate Phase II support to certain eligible areas across the United States.
Purpose
The FCC has adopted comprehensive reforms of its Universal Service Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation (ICC) systems to accelerate broadband build-out to the approximately 23 million Americans (as of December 31, 2013) who lack access to infrastructure capable of providing 10/1 Mbps fixed broadband. This reform will expand the benefits of high-speed Internet to millions of consumers in every part of the country by transforming the existing USF into a new Connect America Fund focused on broadband.
Eligibility
Eligibility The Commission made eligible for the Phase II auction census blocks in states where price cap carriers declined the offer of model-based support, extremely high-cost census blocks nationwide (excluding NY, AK, PR, VI), and certain other census blocks that were removed from the offer of model-based support. To be eligible, a census block could not have been served with voice and broadband of at least 10/1 Mbps (based on Form 477 data) by an unsubsidized competitor or price cap carrier.
Amount Available
$198 million in annual support (a total of $1.98 billion for 10 years). The Commission adopted a $2.15 billion total budget for the Phase II auction, but set aside up to $170.4 million total to allocate through New York’s New NY Broadband Program.
Contact Website
https://www.fcc.gov/auction/903#eligible
Contact Information:
auction903@fcc.gov.
You can also contact members of the Commission’s Rural Broadband Auctions Task Force at: ruralbroadband@fcc.gov.