The Funding Year 2013 Form 471 filing window closed on March 14, 2013, and as the dust settles, we turn our attention to the big question: what will the total demand for E-rate funding look like for the upcoming year?
It typically takes a bit of time for all of the Form 471 data submitted online (or on paper) to be transferred into the SLD’s publicly accessible Data Retrieval Tool (DRT), so it will still be a few weeks before we can have a look at the big picture. In FY 2012, for example, USAC’s official demand estimate was released on April 20, 2012 (close to a month after the FY 2012 filing window closed.)
A very early analysis of the data that has already rolled in, however, shows that demand could again be on the rise. Here is a summary of applicants whose FY2013 applications have already appeared in the public data feed as compared to their applications last year:
