An inconvenient truth

Am I missing something?  Or is everybody else missing something?

Yesterday, USAC sent the FCC the Demand Estimate for FY2016 (well, since the window for consortia and libraries isn't closed yet, it feels more like a Demand Estimate estimate).  Today, the FCC authorized the funding of all Category 1 and Category 2 funding requests.  That notice also authorized a $1.9 billion rollover.

First, the obvious good news:

1. All C1 and C2 funding requests will be approved.
2. Fast action by USAC and the FCC means that we could see C2 funding approvals as early as this month.

Now onto what no one else seems to have noticed.  No one noticed it last year, either.

It has to do with what people think the filing window, and what it really is.

People think that the filing window is the period in which you're allowed to file a Form 471.  File after the deadline, and your application is automatically denied.  And it has been true that if you missed the deadline, you didn't get funded.

But that's not really what the filing window actually is.  What is it?  Let's go to the rules, in this case 47 C.F.R. §54.507(c):

Requests. The Administrator shall implement an initial filing period that treats all schools and libraries filing an application within that period as if their applications were simultaneously received. The initial filing period shall begin and conclude on dates to be determined by the Administrator with the approval of the Chief of the Wireline Competition Bureau. The Administrator shall maintain on the Administrator's Web site a running tally of the funds already committed for the existing funding year. The Administrator may implement such additional filing periods as it deems necessary.

The close of the filing window is not an application deadline.  It just means that your application will not be considered as having been filed first, at exactly the same moment as everybody else who filed in the window.

Originally, the E-Rate was set up as a first-come, first-served program; USAC was supposed to fund requests as they came in, until they hit the funding cap.  But the FCC didn't think is was prudent to have applicants rushing to get their applications in, so in the early days of the program, the Third Report and Order established the filing window, and said that any applications filed in the window would be considered simultaneously filed.

Since funding requests were always over the cap, the effect was that if you didn't file in the window, you didn't get funded, because the funding ran out before it funded all the requests filed in the window.

The close of the filing window has effectively been an application deadline for all those years, but it is not actually a deadline.

Then last year, it happened: the fund didn't run out of money.  And this year, it's happened again.  For FY2016, the cap is $3.939 billion, and USAC estimates we'll have $1.9 billion in rollover.  So USAC is allowed to commit up to $5.839 billion.  The estimated demand is $3.609 billion.  So we have waaay more money than we need to fund all the applications filed in the window.

So what should happen?  The Third Report and Order envisioned the possibility of multiple windows, but there's no need.  USAC should just keep accepting applications until the funding runs out.  So if a district gets a grant in October to purchase a new wireless infrastructure, let them go through the 470 and 471 process then, and if there is still funding left, fund that district's request at that point.  That's the way the program was originally envisioned, and that's what the rules say.

Or am I missing something?