To: NATIONAL EDITORS Contact: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, +1- 202-514-2007 WASHINGTON, March 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A former education consultant from California was sentenced to serve 7 1/2 years in prison for rigging bids and defrauding the E-Rate program, the Department of Justice announced. Judy N....
To: NATIONAL EDITORSContact: U.S. Department of Justice Office of Public Affairs, +1- 202-514-2007, or TDD, +1-202-514-1888 WASHINGTON, Nov. 20 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ --- The former president and owner of ATE Tel Solutions Inc., which does business as ATE Telecom Solutions Inc. ATE Tel, was sentenced to serve three years in prison following...
To: LEGAL AFFAIRS EDITORSContact: The U.S. Department of Justice, +1-202-514-2007, or TDD +1-202-514-1888 WASHINGTON, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- A federal jury in McAllen, Texas, convicted the former president and owner of ATE Tel Solutions Inc., which does business as ATE Telecom Solutions Inc. ATE Tel, on seven of nine counts...
Some 31 members of the House of Representatives from both political parties have asked the Federal Communications Commission FCC to manipulate available rollover universal service fund USF money to keep the entire subsidy program viable -- especially the so-called E-Rate segment for U.S. schools and libraries....
The Federal Communications Commission FCC in recent weeks has been cutting school and libraries districts that receive universal service fund USF E-Rate subsidies some slack regarding some procedural and bureaucratic transgressions. One of its bureaus has been authorizing the consideration of monetary outlays that may have...
WASHINGTON, June 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The state of Indiana and the Intelenet Commission, an entity controlled by the state of Indiana, have agreed to pay the United States nearly $8.3 million as a civil settlement relating to allegations of making false claims and false statements in connection with the...
WASHINGTON, April 20 /U.S. Newswire/ -- NextiraOne LLC, a Houston- based networking company, was charged and sentenced today to pay a $4.6 million criminal fine and restitution for defrauding the Federal Communications Commission's FCC E-Rate program and schools on a South Dakota reservation, the Department of Justice announced. According to...
I WALKED INTO the senator's outer office a few minutes late, having gotten lost in the underground tunnel that connects the two Senate office buildings near the Capitol in Washington, DC. I checked in with the receptionist, who called the staffer I was supposed to meet. In...
A California company has agreed to plead guilty and pay $1.7 million in criminal fines and restitution for its part in defrauding the E-rate program, which provides schools and libraries with $2.25 billion annually in discounts on telecommunications services, internal connections and Internet access. ...
IT COMES AS no surprise that, according to Webster's dictionary, the words policy and politics derive from the Greek word for citizen politicos, since it was Classical Greece that invented citizen politics. A unique opportunity to act like a Classical Greek citizen is coming March 5...
Funding will be the primary issue for education technology proponents in 2006, say experts. "The two super issues for the ed tech community are the funding of the No Child Left Behind Act and the E-rate," said Keith Krueger, executive director of the Consortium...
A SUBCOMMITTEE of the Committee on Energy and Commerce last month released the report, Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Concerns with the E-Rate Program (full report at www.thejournal.com/Erate_Report_Oct05.p df), on the heels of more than 2 1/2 years of investigation into the E-Rate program. The report's findings...
A Congressional report is calling for major reforms in the E-rate program, including a suggestion that schools get smaller E-rate discounts, effectively raising technology costs for schools. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation released a scathing, 52-page report...
While its conclusions about "waste, fraud and abuse" in the Universal Service Fund's current education rate (E-rate) mechanism for funding school and library Internet access certainly can't surprise anyone, last week's report from the House of Representatives on management problems and possible fixes will likely weigh...
A $2.3 billion-a-year program to fund Internet access in schools and libraries is riddled with waste, fraud and abuse, according to a report issued Tuesday by lawmakers who vowed to seek reforms. Among other things, the so-called E-Rate program is poorly managed by the Federal Communications Commission and has...
The Federal Communications Commission late Friday issued its formal order to implement a $211 million emergency services plan for supporting the Universal Service Fund USF program under adverse circumstances in areas affected by Hurricane Katrina within the Gulf Coast states of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi (TPR,...
Although its members wanted and welcomed Federal Communications Commission initiatives to enhance the application of universal service fund USF programs in the Gulf Coast region ravaged by two recent hurricanes, a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee last week raised many questions about the federal regulator's ability...
The Federal Communications Commission is launching a "broad inquiry" into the operation of the Universal Service Fund, which is responsible for the federal E-rate program. The inquiry comes a little less than a year after the FCC changed rules to curb waste, fraud and...
A large coalition of government, public interest and telecom industry groups sent a letter to Capitol Hill urging the Senate Commerce Committee to pass a bill that would permanently exempt the universal-service fund from the Anti-Deficiency Act. More than 30 organizations, including Alcatel, Western Wireless Corp....
The Department of Justice has charged six companies and five people for colluding to defraud the E-rate program. The E-rate program provides discounts to schools and libraries on telecommunications service, Internet access and internal connections. Companies compete to offer services for schools, who are...
