USF billing at Merit

[Jeff Ogden]

If you aren't associated with a K-12 school or library, you can probably
skip the rest of this message.  If you are associated with a K-12 school or
library that is expecting USF discounts from Merit, but you aren't the
person dealing with USF issues, please pass this note along to the right
person.

Last November Merit stopped billing K-12 schools and libraries for
dedicated connections and dial-in access if we thought that the school or
library might be getting universal service fund discounts. It took the
Schools and Libraries Division (SLD) much longer than expected to get all
of the USF funding commitments sent out for Year One and then it took
longer than expected to do all of the follow-up paperwork and sort things
out at Merit. Finally, in mid to late June we sent out invoices that
included USF discounts for dedicated connections.

In some cases the invoices show a balance due and in other cases the
invoices show a credit. If there was an amount due, the invoices are
processed through Merit's account receivables agent, the University of
Michigan, so it is possible that schools and libraries won't have received
them yet. If there was a credit, the forms were mailed directly to the
schools and libraries and so we'd expect most sites would have received
them by now.

If a school or library is owed a credit and they filed a BEAR from, we've
already submitted requests for checks to be written to our accounts payable
agent, the University of Michigan.  If a BEAR form wasn't filed, we will
carry the credit forward to the next bill we send, unless the school or
library contacts us and asks us to send a check. The University of Michigan
has recently switched to a new financial computer system and as a result we
are not sure how long it will take before they send the checks. It could
take 30 to 60 days.

We are working on the invoices for dial-in services now and hope to have
them sent out by the end of July.

In some cases the invoices we sent out in late June did not include USF
discounts.  The most common reason for this was that we have not received
notice from the SLD that they received a form 486 from the school or
library authorizing the start of payments. If you received a USF funding
commitment, but have not filed your form 486 please do so now since we
cannot give you your discount until that form has been filed and we receive
notice from the SLD. If we can't get this work done by mid August, schools
and libraries may lose their USF discounts. That is something we all want
to avoid.

In some other cases we were not able to give the USF discount because we
could not match up a USF Funding Request Number with specific Merit
services or the USF funding commitment was for "internal connections" and
the service that Merit provided was "Internet access". In these cases the
Internet Consultants at Merit will be calling the sites to sort this out.
If we can get the information we need, there is still time for us to get
schools and libraries their Year One discounts.

If you have questions about any of this, please contact your Merit Internet
Consultant.

   -Jeff