47 C.F.R. § 54.604 Existing contracts.
Title 47 - Telecommunication
(a) Existing contracts. A signed contract for services eligible for support pursuant to this subpart between an eligible health care provider as defined under §54.601 and a telecommunications carrier shall be exempt from the competitive bid requirements set forth in §54.603(a) as follows: (1) A contract signed on or before July 10, 1997 is exempt from the competitive bid requirement for the life of the contract; or (2) A contract signed after July 10, 1997 but before the date on which the universal service competitive bid system described in §54.603 is operational is exempt from the competitive bid requirements only with respect to services that will be provided under such contract between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 1998. (b) For rural health care providers that take service under or pursuant to a master contract, as defined in §54.500(f), the date of execution of that master contract represents the applicable date for purposes of determining whether and to what extent the rural health care provider is exempt from the competitive bid requirements. (c) The competitive bid system will be deemed to be operational when the Administrator is ready to accept and post FCC Form 465 from rural health care providers on a website and that website is available for use by telecommunications carriers. (d) The exemption from competitive bid requirements set forth in paragraph (a) of this section shall not apply to voluntary extensions or renewals of existing contracts, except to the extent that an eligible rural health care provider as defined in §54.601 or consortium that includes an eligible health care provider, and that filed an application within the 75-day initial filing window for 1998 (May 1, 1998—July 14, 1998), may voluntarily extend or renew, to a date no later than June 30, 1999, an existing contract that otherwise would terminate between July 14, 1998 and June 30, 1999. [63 FR 2131, Jan. 13, 1998; 63 FR 33586, June 19, 1998, as amended at 63 FR 70572, Dec. 21, 1998; 64 FR 22810, Apr. 28, 1999]
Title 47: Telecommunication
PART 54—UNIVERSAL SERVICE
Subpart G—Universal Service Support for Health Care Providers
§ 54.604 Existing contracts.
