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Monday, August 04, 2008

86% discount? Sorry, not this year

E-Rate Central is reporting that at last week's USAC board meeting, the projection was that Priority Two requests will only be funded down to the 87% level. (Although at this point the board is only asking the FCC to deny applications at 83% and lower.)

Can we get rid of the 2-in-5 rule yet? Over a year ago, I declared that this rule must go. What is the FCC waiting for? 2-in-5 doesn't succeed in cutting demand, it harms applicants and creates waste.

Alas, we haven't seen the flood of appeals to the FCC due to the 2-in-5 rule that I predicted a year ago. I don't know if that's because most applicants have figured out the 2-in-5 thing, or because the denials haven't really started coming in big numbers yet. So it looks like we'll be stuck with 2-in-5 at least through the 2009-2010 funding year.

2 comments:

  1. Anonymous12:32 PM

    Last week the cutoff was 83% and perhaps 86%. This week, USAC reports $800M available for future funding. According to FFL, it would take about $400M to fund down to 83%, but would take almost $800M to fund through 80%. Any bets on how quickly the FCC rolls over half or all of this to 2008?

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  2. In the past, the FCC hasn't made supplementary rollovers (though funding has been available). But 86% is kind of embarassing....

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