The Unsung Hero: E-Rate Makes Internet Affordable for Schools and Libraries Throughout the State

The most widely used program at UEN may also be its least recognized. This program provides every K-12 school in Utah with affordable, high-speed internet service by using federal funds designed to expand access, particularly for rural and low-income schools. It’s called E-Rate, and it’s the fuel that has propelled UEN for more than 25 years.

Established by the Telecommunications Act of 1996, E-Rate (officially The Schools and Libraries Universal Service Support Program) began distributing funds in 1998 to help offset the cost of internet service. Utah began accessing these resources the following year.

E-Rate is a multimillion-dollar program in Utah. In FY2026, UEN’s E-Rate team filed for 323 applications totaling $17,349,425. This money reimburses UEN for the payments it makes to telecommunications providers for schools and libraries. UEN acts as a statewide consortium, meaning we negotiate for a large group of schools, libraries, and Head Start programs, and as a result, we can get better prices from telecom providers than individual rural districts or charter schools could ever achieve on their own. 

“I love the way the E-Rate touches every part of UEN,” said Lisa Kuhn, UEN’s Chief Financial Officer. “Finance, procurement, technical services, security—they’re all part of the process. It’s really amazing.”

The E-Rate program delivers a high, measurable return on investment. A $3.5M State contribution secures approximately $7.5M in federal funding, resulting in $11M in total program value.  For every $1 spent on eligible connectivity, the state pays 32 cents while E-Rate covers 68 cents, which generates a 214% return on investment. The program effectively more than triples the state’s purchasing power for eligible connectivity. 

Beyond financial advantages, the program supports equitable access, strengthens infrastructure, and stabilizes long-term connectivity costs. Continued participation represents a fiscally responsible strategy that maximizes federal funding and advances statewide connectivity goals.

UEN’s E-Rate team has five employees who work full-time on this effort, and many more employees contribute part of their time to this project every year. This investment removes the cost, time, and compliance burden from the end users, saving the state millions of dollars every year.

The journey to connect a single school or library begins with our Field Operations team and technical advocates working closely with district IT directors, library directors, and charter school administrators to assess school needs and set up their infrastructure. These technical requirements are then handed off to our Procurement team to start the competitive bidding process. 

Managing this process is a massive administrative lift. Our Procurement department handles the complex request for proposals (RFP) cycle, ensuring every circuit—the physical backbone of the organization's internet—is bid out fairly. Because contracts usually last for five years, the team cycles through a different set of circuits every year to keep the state’s network up to date. 

The final hurdle in securing funding is compliance. Our E-Rate team handles documentation, responds to questions from the FCC, and navigates rigorous audits. E-Rate has extensive safeguards to prevent misuse of funds, and those safeguards require UEN to maintain extensive documentation. A single error, such as an incorrect address, can result in a site being labeled ineligible. UEN’s experienced team keeps such instances to a bare minimum, maintaining a high success rate with single-digit disqualifications among over 300 applications.

Because we do this work, schools, libraries, and other E-Rate beneficiaries don’t have to. Educators, students, and patrons get the high-speed internet they need, and they don’t have to think about how it gets to them. E-Rate is one of the most impactful ways that UEN networks for education.

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