Cisco/Tandberg Global Substitution Request Approved

USAC has approved a global substitution request for Tandberg products which were updated with new Cisco part numbers. The service substitution approval letter may be downloaded by clicking here. If you have any questions about the substitution, please contact us using the "Questions" tab at the top of the screen.

SMARTnet Services for Eligible Products

In September 2010, FCC released its Sixth Report and Order that revised the methods of reimbursement for certain Basic Maintenance of Internal Connection Services. The FCC’s order affected the eligibility status of Cisco’s SMARTnet service offering, which contains eligible basic maintenance services as well as ineligible services. The FCC recently clarified that an applicant can receive E-rate discounts for basic maintenance service contracts like SMARTnet that include both eligible and ineligible services. However, in order for an applicant to receive funding for such a contract, the applicant must be able to isolate and accurately allocate the costs of the eligible services. Cisco has developed a fair and reasonable cost-allocation methodology for SMARTnet and higher levels of service which should satisfy the FCC’s requirements, and USAC is approving funding requests for SMARTnet and higher levels of service when cost-allocated according to Cisco’s methodology.

Funding Year 2012 (Year 15) and Forward

Applicants who wish to purchase SMARTnet service for eligible products in FY2012 and forward should be able to do so using the cost-allocation methodology Cisco has prepared. When preparing their applications for E-rate funding, applicants should ensure that they are only requesting E-rate discounts on the eligible portion of the full cost of the SMARTnet part numbers in question. Procedurally, this will work exactly the same way as the process for requesting discounts on cost-allocated products – the purchase price of the SMARTnet contract should be divided into eligible and ineligible portions, and the eligible portion will be used as the pre-discount amount for eligibility purposes.

A worksheet which provides the cost delta between Cisco Base and the various service levels of SMARTnet may be found here. It is important to note that this worksheet contains percentages for products which are eligible, cost-allocated, or ineligible. IT is NOT an eligibility worksheet. In order to determine the E-rate eligibility of any of the service SKUs in the worksheet, the percentage in the ‘Delta’ column should be multiplied by the eligible percentage of the product covered by that service. You can find product eligibility information on this site at http://www.ciscoerate.com/index.htm?menuItem=4. Cisco partners may also find more information by visiting the E-Rate Partner Central site at http://www.cisco.com/web/partners/sell/industry/education-k12/e-rate.html#~svc.

If you have further questions regarding product eligibility or this cost allocation methodology, please contact Cisco Helpdesk, provided by Funds For Learning: http://www.ciscoerate.com/index.htm?menuItem=1. If you have any E-rate services questions, please contact the E-rate Services alias: erate_inquires@external.cisco.com.

Cisco E-rate Promotion Information