How the data works.

We ingest the USAC Socrata Open Data API directly. The datasets we rely on:

• jt8s-3q52 — Form 470 service requests
• avi8-svp9 — Form 471 funding commitments
• 9s6i-myen — Form 471 basic information
• qdmp-ygft — FRN status detail
• hbj5-2bpj — Form 471 FRN line items
• tuem-agyq — Form 471 recipients of service
• 7i5i-83qf — E-Rate supplemental entity information
• jpiu-tj8h — Invoices and authorized disbursements
• xcy2-bdid — E-Rate service providers
• 6brt-5pbv — E-Rate Category 2 budget tool data

Every raw API response is archived to object storage before any transformation. If USAC publishes it, we can show you the original payload we ingested and the timestamp we ingested it.

Production product data is limited to the public USAC Socrata datasets listed above. We do not supplement product records with third-party government, commercial, or authenticated portal data.

Form 470 filings are checked on a four-hour schedule during the filing window and appear after a successful sync. Form 471 commitments and FRN status changes are polled against the USAC :updated_at field so we only pull records that actually changed.

We rate-limit ourselves to 50 requests per hour and back off exponentially on errors. This means we're a polite tenant on the USAC API — and it means our data is as fresh as USAC publishes, never fresher.

Rubric v3 is a deterministic, transparent calculation—not a bid-win prediction or a black-box model. It combines your saved seller profile with public filing facts and only Funded or Committed public FRN history for the applicant. The weights total 100 points:

• Territory — 20: filing state matches your saved territory.
• Product line — 20: the current public Form 470 service request matches your focus.
• Category — 10: Category 1 or Category 2 matches your preference.
• Applicant type — 10 and enrollment range — 10: public applicant attributes fit your profile.
• Historical OEM — 10: a preferred OEM appears in the applicant's prior public commitment records. This does not imply an OEM is specified on the current Form 470.
• Prior funded relationship — 10: your saved SPIN or OEM appears in prior public commitment records for the applicant.
• Filing recency — 5 and window timing — 5: the certified and closing dates are measured against the displayed score-as-of timestamp.

An unset preference receives a neutral score where appropriate; missing public data is never invented. Hover any score in the app to see its strongest contributors. Detail pages show every factor, the rubric version, and when the score was computed.

USAC service descriptions are free-text. We classify each FRN line item into a product line taxonomy (firewalls, switches, wireless, ISP, cabling, etc.) and detect the OEM when one is named. Classification is rule-based today, with an ML pass planned as the training corpus grows. The classifier's output is stored alongside the raw text so you can always see both.

• We do not scrape or redistribute data from the E-Rate Productivity Center (EPC). EPC data is authenticated and non-public.
• We do not sell harvested contact lists or send bulk unsolicited mail to applicants.
• We do not show bid prices or any information USAC has not yet published. No hidden-data layer — just public record.
• We do not build features that help a service provider prepare an applicant's Form 470 — this is prohibited under 47 CFR § 54.503.

Our design rule: if a feature could be construed as providing advance or non-public information in the competitive bidding process, it does not ship.

ERateSignal is pre-launch. The product-line taxonomy and territory analytics will evolve as founding members use the product against live filing windows. Scoring changes are versioned, tested, and disclosed in the methodology and the score itself so an old cached result cannot silently masquerade as a current rubric. If you want a direct line into those decisions, join the founding cohort.

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