You’ve submitted your FCC Form(s) 471 and received your Receipt Acknowledgment Letter (RAL), and you realized you made an error on your certified FCC Form 471. Now what?

You should have accessed and read your Receipt Acknowledgment Letter (RAL) in EPC. After you review your RAL, we strongly recommend that you take another look at all sections of your FCC Form(s) 471, looking for any mistakes. This post will cover how to correct errors on your form(s).

So what do you do if you find an error? Over the next two posts, we will cover two types of form modifications: Ministerial and clerical errors in this post and more serious cardinal changes in the following post.

Ministerial & Clerical Errors

Ministerial & clerical errors are data entry mistakes and are considered minor errors. These minor errors are ones that a typist might make when entering data from one list to another, such as mistyping a number, using the wrong name or phone number, failing to enter an item from the source list onto the application, or making an arithmetic error. For these mistakes, you can request a modification (called a “RAL modification”) in EPC. Here are some examples of ministerial and clerical errors:

• Spelling errors
• Simple addition, subtraction, multiplication or division errors
• Transposed letters and numbers
• Misplaced decimal points
• Other punctuation marks (hyphens, periods, commas, etc.) included or not included or misplaced
• Failing to enter an item from the source list (e.g., NSLP data, FRN, etc.)

How to Fix Ministerial & Clerical Errors

You can request a RAL modification by going into your EPC account and accessing the certified FCC Form 471 you want to update. To do this:

1. From your landing page, scroll to My Forms.
2. From the drop-down menus, choose “FCC Form 471” for Form Type and select the Status “Certified.”
3. Find the form you want to modify from the list of forms that appear and click the form number.
4. Select Related Actions in the left menu.

5. Click Submit Modification Request (RAL).
6. From the Form 471 Modification Request screen, you can make changes to:

• Your Application: Select Application and choose one of the following.
  • Application Details
  • Funding Request Details
• Your Entity: Select Entity and choose one of the following.
  • BEN
  • Related Entities

Refer to the April 29 News Brief for step-by-step instructions on making specific modifications.

RAL modifications can be submitted by partial rights users and full rights users. You can submit RAL modifications up until you receive your Funding Commitment Decision Letter (FCDL). However, we strongly suggest you submit any RAL modifications as soon as possible.

Cardinal Changes

For more significant changes to your form that alter your original funding request, you may need to start the competitive bidding process over and submit a new FCC Form 471 altogether. Note that you must still submit your new form before the end of the filing window.

Making a significant change to your funding request that changes the original representation of what was presented during competitive bidding will cause problems during program compliance reviews. Stay tuned for the next post to learn what changes are NOT allowed at this stage.