E-rate Form 470 Bid Radar: School & Library RFP Alerts

E-rate Form 470 Bid Radar watches the states, service categories, and keyword terms you name and delivers new FCC Form 470 filings (the RFPs that schools, libraries, and consortia post when they seek E-rate funded services) that match your filter. It reads USAC's official open-data feed, keeps a per-filter memory so you never see the same 470 twice, computes each filing's competitive-bidding clock, and returns flat rows you can schedule, download, or pipe through the Apify API.

This is a standing filter-watch, not a bulk export. You name the states and terms to track and it returns the freshly posted 470s that match, each with the date the applicant can first award a contract, so you know what to bid on and how long the window stays open.

What does E-rate Form 470 Bid Radar do?

Every run pulls a recent date window from USAC's public FCC Form 470 dataset (opendata.usac.org, dataset jt8s-3q52, license public domain), keeps only the 470s whose state, service category, and optional keyword terms match your filter, removes any 470 this filter has already delivered, and returns the rest as dataset rows. Each row carries the applicant, the service request, the certified date, and allowableContractDate (the date, 28 days after certification, when the applicant may first award a contract). An optional webhook receives the same new alerts for real-time delivery.

Optionally, for any applicant you name by billed entity number (BEN), the actor builds a bid brief: a join of three public Form 471 datasets that shows the applicant's incumbent service providers, their committed funding history, and the applicant's Category 1 and Category 2 discount rates. That is bid intelligence: who already serves this applicant and at what discount, so you can price and position a competitive response.

There is no login, no proxy, and no browser.

Why use E-rate Form 470 Bid Radar?

• Watch the RFPs that matter to you. Filter by state, by Category 1 (internet and WAN transport) or Category 2 (internal connections), and by keyword or manufacturer terms such as firewall, Cisco, or cabling.
• Know the clock. Every alert carries allowableContractDate and bidDaysRemaining, so you see how many days remain before the applicant can award, straight from USAC's own 28-day rule.
• No duplicates. Each filter remembers what it has already delivered, so an overlapping window costs nothing and repeats nothing.
• Understand the incumbent. A bid brief shows who currently serves an applicant and the discount they receive, drawn entirely from public Form 471 records.
• Public record. Form 470 and Form 471 filings are public E-rate records published by USAC.

How to use E-rate Form 470 Bid Radar

1. In the Input tab, list the two-letter States you want to watch (for example TX).
2. Leave Service categories on both CAT1 and CAT2, or narrow to one.
3. Optionally add Keyword / manufacturer terms to keep only 470s whose service request mentions them.
4. Run it once to preview the matches. Set Dry run to true first if you want a no-charge preview of up to five rows.
5. Create a daily Schedule for the actor. Each scheduled run delivers only 470s you have not seen before, so a daily cadence with the default 7-day lookback covers the portal's measured 2 to 4.5 day publishing lag plus weekends.
6. Optionally set a Webhook URL to receive each run's new alerts as a POST, and list Bid brief BENs to add a bid brief for named applicants.

Give each distinct filter its own Filter name so its deduplication memory stays separate.

Input

Field	Required	Default	Description
states	Yes	none	1 to 15 two-letter state codes to watch.
serviceCategories	No	["CAT1","CAT2"]	CAT1 (Category 1) and/or CAT2 (Category 2).
keywords	No	none	Up to 25 terms, each 3 to 80 characters. Case and punctuation insensitive substring match on the service request line.
lookbackDays	No	7	Days back from today (America/New_York) to query on the certified date, 1 to 30. Overlap is free because delivered 470s are deduplicated.
briefBENs	No	none	Up to 10 billed entity numbers to build a bid brief for on this run.
webhookUrl	No	none	Optional https URL that receives new alerts as a POST.
filterName	No	default	Names this filter so its dedupe memory persists across runs.
dryRun	No	false	Preview up to 5 rows, charge nothing, write no filter memory.

A ready-to-run example (also the prefilled input):

{
    "states": ["TX"],
    "serviceCategories": ["CAT1", "CAT2"],
    "lookbackDays": 14,
    "filterName": "default"
}

Output

Each new 470 is one flat dataset row. You can download the dataset in JSON, HTML, CSV, or Excel.

{
    "rowType": "alert",
    "applicationNumber": "260026228",
    "applicantName": "FESSENDEN-BOWDON SCHOOL DISTRICT 25",
    "billedEntityNumber": "134483",
    "contactName": "Darren Sheggerud",
    "contactEmail": "darren.sheggerud@k12.nd.us",
    "contactPhone": "701-547-3096",
    "complianceNote": null,
    "state": "ND",
    "city": "FESSENDEN",
    "serviceCategory": "Category 1",
    "serviceType": "Data Transmission and/or Internet Access",
    "serviceFunction": "Category One Network Equipment",
    "quantities": "1 Each",
    "manufacturer": null,
    "fundingYear": "2026",
    "certifiedDate": "2026-06-24",
    "allowableContractDate": "2026-07-22",
    "bidDaysRemaining": 16,
    "rfpDocumentUrls": ["https://publicdata.usac.org/EPC/Prd/Form470/260026228/134483/21409768-RFP%20Narrative.docx"],
    "matchedTerms": [],
    "filterName": "default",
    "billing": "included-tier",
    "source": "https://opendata.usac.org/resource/jt8s-3q52.json"
}

A bid brief row (delivered only for BENs you request) looks like:

{
    "rowType": "bid-brief",
    "billedEntityNumber": "140475",
    "applicantName": "Prosper Indep School District",
    "incumbentSpins": [{ "spinName": "Zayo Group, LLC", "fundingYear": "2026", "commitmentUsd": 6931.2 }],
    "discountC1": "0.4",
    "discountC2": "0.4",
    "fundingYearsCovered": ["2026", "2025", "2024"],
    "sources": ["https://opendata.usac.org/resource/qdmp-ygft.json"],
    "billing": "bid-brief",
    "status": "ok"
}

If a BEN has no Form 471 record on file, the brief still ships with its sections empty and a note saying so, and it is delivered free of charge.

A summary record is also written to the run's key-value store under OUTPUT with counts for the run: new matches, alerts delivered by tier, bid briefs delivered, any rows withheld at your charge limit, the seen-set size, the feed's newest certified date, and the feed lag in days.

Alert data fields

Field	Meaning
applicationNumber	The Form 470 application number. This is the deduplication key.
applicantName, billedEntityNumber	The applicant (school, library, or consortium) and its BEN.
contactName, contactEmail, contactPhone	The 470's public contact. Present for filings through funding year 2027; withheld for funding year 2028 and later (see Compliance below).
complianceNote	Present only when contact fields are withheld, explaining why.
state, city	The applicant's location.
serviceCategory	Category 1 or Category 2.
serviceType, serviceFunction, quantities, manufacturer	The service request line, as filed.
fundingYear	The funding year, as filed.
certifiedDate	The date USAC certified the 470 (YYYY-MM-DD).
allowableContractDate	The first date the applicant may award a contract (28 days after certification).
bidDaysRemaining	allowableContractDate minus today. How long until the applicant can award.
rfpDocumentUrls	Links to the RFP documents and the certified form PDF, when the applicant attached them.
matchedTerms	Which of your keyword terms matched this 470.
filterName, billing, source	The filter this row belongs to, its billing tier, and the source dataset URL.

Demo dataset

The public demo dataset is at https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/4ubo5msiUvLabVXh8/items?format=json. It was generated by live run fanQVwHod9yfttRug from a clean representative New York Category 1 Form 470 filter with dry-run preview enabled, so it shows a real USAC alert row with applicant, BEN, service request, bid clock, RFP URL, and source attribution without writing filter memory or billing alert events.

Pricing

The actor is billed per event.

• Monthly filter watch fee: 5.00 USD per filter. Charged once per filter per calendar month on the first run that completes a fresh feed query.
• Alert: 0.90 USD per delivered 470 for the first 150 alerts a filter delivers in a month.
• Volume alert: 0.45 USD per delivered 470 beyond the first 150 in a month, for the peak filing season when a broad, big-state filter can surface hundreds of matches.
• Bid brief: 9.90 USD per brief for each BEN you request, charged only when the brief returns real Form 471 history: an incumbent provider, a discount rate, or a funding year. A well-formed BEN with no Form 471 record on file is still returned with a note, free of charge.
• First calendar month free of the watch fee. The 5.00 USD watch fee is waived during your account's first calendar month; alerts still bill per alert. The free month applies once per account.

A dry run charges nothing. A run that cannot complete its query charges nothing. When the feed has not refreshed in more than 7 days, the watch fee is deferred until it does, so you never pay to watch a paused portal. Alerts withheld because you reached your run's max-charge limit are not billed and are redelivered on the next run.

A quiet-season filter on one state costs a few alert charges a month. A broad, multi-state filter at the February peak can bill a few hundred dollars all in, watch fee included, because that is when the most 470s post.

Seasonality

E-rate Form 470 filing runs on the program calendar. The heavy filing season is roughly July through March, and volume peaks in late winter, with February the busiest month. April through June is a trickle. A filter you schedule in the quiet months costs very little and is ready when volume returns.

Tips and advanced options

• Run daily on a Schedule. The default 7-day lookback covers the portal's normal publishing lag plus weekends; overlap is free because 470s you have already received are deduplicated.
• Use the same filterName across scheduled runs so the dedupe memory persists. Use different filterName values for different filters.
• Set a per-run max-charge limit if you want a hard ceiling. If a run reaches it mid-delivery, the withheld 470s are not billed and return on the next run, with one marker row noting how many were held back.
• Use dryRun to check your states and keywords before scheduling.
• Add briefBENs for the applicants you are seriously considering, rather than every match, since each brief is billed.

Compliance and responsible use

Form 470 and Form 471 records are public E-rate filings published by USAC. This actor delivers bid intelligence: what to bid on, the applicant's funding history, and the competitive-bidding clock.

A posted Form 470 is USAC's invitation to bid, not a marketing list. Through funding year 2027, a service provider may use a 470's public contact fields for responsive, bid-specific communication during the competitive-bidding window: questions about the procurement, requests for the RFP documents, and submission of a responsive bid. Generic business solicitation is outside that scope.

From funding year 2028 (the portal opens around July 2027 under FCC 26-30, WC Docket 21-455), all bid-related communication between a provider and an applicant must run inside USAC's competitive bidding portal. To match that rule, this actor withholds the contactName, contactEmail, and contactPhone fields for any filing in funding year 2028 or later and stamps a complianceNote in their place. The 470 still delivers as bid intelligence; only the direct contact fields are held back.

FAQ, limitations, and support

• Is this data legal to use? Form 470 and Form 471 filings are public records published by USAC. This actor reads USAC's own open-data feed.
• How fresh is the data? USAC refreshes the feed on business days. During testing the newest certified 470 was a few days old, and a 4-day gap was measured over the July 4 holiday, so the portal pauses on federal holidays and weekends.
• What is the delay between a 470 posting and my alert? USAC's own publishing lag ran about 2 to 4.5 days during testing, so the default 7-day lookback catches new 470s on a daily schedule.
• Which states are covered? Any of the 50 states, DC, and the E-rate territories, up to 15 per filter.
• Are the RFP documents themselves included? The links are, when the applicant attached them. The actor returns the URLs USAC publishes, not the document contents.
• How reliable is the webhook? It is best-effort alerting with retries. The dataset is the durable record. If you need to verify the caller, put a secret token in your webhook URL.
• What happens if the feed changes shape? The actor checks the feed's structure on every run and stops without charging if a field it depends on is missing, rather than delivering broken rows.

For issues or a custom variant, use the Issues tab on the actor page.