E-Rate technology for K-12
Schools and Libraries
Don't miss your filling deadlines. Reach out now to claim e-rate funds.
2026 E-Rate Guide: Understanding E-Rate
Claim federal discounts on broadband and network infrastructure to build faster, safer, and more connected learning environments.
The E-Rate program is a federal funding initiative that provides eligible schools and libraries with discounted access to telecommunications, internet, and internal networking infrastructure. With over $5 billion available annually, this program supports digital equity and connectivity for students and communities nationwide.
Discounts range from 20-85%, depending on need-based criteria such as poverty levels, urban or rural classification, and service types requested. Institutions can apply individually or as part of a consortium during the designated application period each year.
Download the 2026 E-Rate Guide below to learn about the future of education technology, the funding acquisition process for the next budget cycle, and more information on how Cisco and BlueAlly can help you every step of the way.
Form 470 Filing Alert!
Form 470 must be posted at least 28 days before the Form 471 window closes on March 4, 2026.
Don't delay your application process. Reach out for a consultation and claim E-Rate funds today.
E-Rate Process: Steps & Timeline
Stay on track with key forms, school information, and deadlines.
Transformative Tech: An Overview
Connected Classrooms. Secure Campuses. Empowered Learning.
Cisco’s Comprehensive Product Portfolio and BlueAlly’s integrated supports power inclusive learning experiences for all students.
Enhance student education with cloud-managed Wi-Fi and integrated security—E-Rate eligible and built to scale. Boost teacher productivity with upgraded networks, enable seamless collaboration beyond the classroom, and lay a strong digital foundation with Cisco’s bundled, all-in-one networking and security solutions.
With Cisco’s unmatched breadth of E-Rate eligible solutions and BlueAlly’s expert E-Rate support, you gain a partner—not just a provider. We help you build a strategy before Form 470 is even filed, ensuring a smoother, more successful E-Rate experience.
Education Technology: Expanded
Explore the full range of use cases that Cisco products and services can help you address more effectively.
Student Experiences
Hybrid Learning
- Create innovative physical and virtual environments to deliver learning flexibly and better engage students
- Deliver system interoperability and information sharing to provide a seamless academic experience and track student performance
- Pre-record lectures that can be viewed from inside the LMS
- Schedule office hours from inside LMS
- Conduct virtual office hours and tutoring sessions
- Consistent, simple technology experience whether in class or virtual
- Automated class summaries and action items
- Optimized framing and AI-driven camera intelligence
- Identify and remediate network and application disruptions that interfere with teaching and learning
Student Support Services
- Hybrid delivery of counseling, academic advising, health, financial aid, and other services
- Analyze multiple data sources to track and remediate student engagement
- Provide student engagement via mobile app with live interactions
- Prioritized alerts for faculty advisors
- Track engagement for in-person and distance learning activities
- Behavioral analytics to predict student outcomes
- Secure connectivity to virtual service providers
- Proactively identify students at risk
Personalized Residential Experiences
- Student self-service mobile app for onboarding
- App allows for onboarding of student devices to their “home” network
- Network access only for personal devices, reducing shared visibility and increasing security
- Student invites friend(s) to personal network
- Operational visibility to student network devices
- Utilize strategic advantage of network architecture
Smart Campus
Campus Network and Wireless
- Seamless, secure access to learning, services, content, and resources for multiple devices
- Reduced network management complexity
- Protection against malicious Wi- Fi behavior
- Increased visibility across digital silos
- Secure Wi-Fi access for visitors
- AI-enabled NetOps solutions
- Reliable, secure, extended coverage to ensure quality and consistency of digital experiences
- Simpler, cost-effective network management and troubleshooting
Smart and Sustainable Buildings
- Detect and manage building occupancy, temperature, lighting, waste management, etc.
- Consolidate operations dashboards across multiple functions
- Power over Ethernet (PoE) can support reduction in energy consumption
- AI-enabled smart buildings
- Automate and optimize energy resource usage
- IoT capabilities that deliver frictionless experiences (e.g., smart parking, EV charging)
- Reliable, secure, extended coverage to ensure availability of building automation systems
- Simpler, cost-effective network management and troubleshooting
Hybrid Cloud Management
- Scalable and agile application and data architecture
- Improve IT department efficiency and service level through tool consolidation and increased automation
- Automate, enforce, and ensure intent across data center network
- Ensure continuous, formal verifications, insights, and corrective actions
- Proactively pinpoint deviations from intended behaviors and recommend remediation
- Unified, proactive visibility into app experiences
- Scalable infrastructure to ensure seamless digital experiences and operations
- Simpler, cost-effective network management and troubleshooting
Faculty and Staff Experiences
Hybrid Teaching and Professional Development
- Create and deliver online content and training for faculty
- Deliver faculty collaboration platform that offers persistent development opportunities and reporting capabilities
- Gain insights into remote workforce engagement and hybrid teaching activities
- Enable meetings with remote faculty
- Invite guest professional development lecturers
- Hands-free, secure, assisted reality-based collaboration with features to get connected with students and other researchers from anywhere
- Identify and remediate network and application disruptions that interfere with teaching and learning
- Automated assessments and hybrid class meeting summaries
- Optimized framing and AI-driven camera intelligence
Communications
- Secure voice, video, and text communications
- Simplified experience that allows business and personal phone numbers on a single device
- Conduct live video calls with any number of participants from any device
- Record meetings for review and for missed participants
- Continue discussion after meeting in secure, private messaging spaces
- Broadcast messages across customized digital signage
- Automated parent and staff meeting summaries and action items
- Reliable, secure, extended coverage to ensure quality and consistency of voice, video, and emergency calls
Research Infrastructure
Research and Education Networks
- Lower energy consumption, reducing cost and environmental impact
- Secure, high-bandwidth connectivity and high-speed application performance
- Flexible, open management platform across multiple systems
- Implement an edge-to-edge service layer, connecting disparate multidomain networks
- Enable a software-driven infrastructure with portals and APIs for automation and orchestration
- Automate manual controls to simplify compliance reporting, reduce risk, and adhere to regulatory requirements
- Reliable, secure, extended coverage to ensure availability of research infrastructure
- Faster, automated troubleshooting and remediation of research network and application disruptions
Remote Research and Collaboration
- Ability for researchers to connect with one another-- anytime, anywhere, on any device--over both voice and video
- Tools that enable researchers to collaborate on documents and whiteboard concepts while persistently communicating
- Securely share content, meeting recordings, and conversations between researchers
- Instantly communicate with one another and bring other researchers and experts to projects
- Communicate with research grant funders and participating corporations
- Hands-free, secure, assisted reality-based collaboration with features to get connected with students and other researchers from anywhere
- Optimized framing and AI-driven camera intelligence
- Faster, automated troubleshooting and remediation of research network and application disruptions
Hybrid Cloud Management
- Scalable and agile application and data architecture
- Improve IT department efficiency and service level through tool consolidation and increased automation
- Automate, enforce, and ensure intent across data center network
- Ensure continuous, formal verifications, insights, and corrective actions
- Proactively pinpoint deviations from intended behaviors and recommend remediation
- Unified, proactive visibility into app experiences
- Scalable infrastructure to ensure seamless digital experiences and operations
- Simpler, cost-effective network management and troubleshooting
Cybersecurity Pilot Program
*K-12 schools and public libraries that wish to apply to the pilot program can do so by submitting FCC Form 484. This application requires them to share key information about their existing cybersecurity measures and resources, as well as their proposed technology projects and estimated costs if selected for the program. The FCC will assess all submissions and choose the participants for the pilot. Those selected will then enter a competitive bidding process, followed by a funding application, billing, and invoicing procedures similar to those of the E-Rate program. Visit the USAC website for more details.
Network, Endpoint, and Web Security
- Allow student, faculty, and staff BYOD to be onboarded effectively
- Detect network traffic anomalies
- Detect malicious behavior from encrypted transmissions without compromising security
- Defend highly sensitive administrative or research devices
- Enable new threat detection quickly
- Extend data protections and monitoring to any campus services, anywhere
- AI-enhanced cybersecurity
- Unified and simplified identity and security policy across network domains
Identity and Access Control
- Identify many different types of devices and users
- Match individual identity to policy enforcement
- Enable guest access with strict access policy
- Secure remote researcher/administrator data access
- Recognize compromised faculty/researcher accounts quickly
- Utilize cross-institution identity support through InCommon and Internet2 NET+
- Automatically analyze and classify unknown devices based on their behavior
Education and Cloud Security
- Immediate threat detection and prevention
- Threat remediation
- Data protection
- Collaboration security
Product Bundles Designed for K-12 Education
Products available under Category Two (C2) funding include Meraki wireless access points, Catalyst switches, firewalls, and cloud-managed solutions for simplified administration and robust security. These technologies are designed to support everything from public internet access and digital literacy programs to secure staff operations and remote learning services.
Success Stories
E-Rate for Libraries
With deep expertise in eligible technologies and regulatory compliance, Cisco and BlueAlly guide libraries through every step of the E-Rate process, from budget planning to deployment.
Whether upgrading internal networks or expanding Wi-Fi beyond library walls, Cisco’s powerful, E-Rate eligible solutions and BlueAlly’s strategic support ensure libraries get the most from their funding— efficiently, confidently, and in line with their mission.
Learn MoreE-Rate for Tribal & Rural Communities
Tribal libraries and schools are eligible for enhanced E-Rate support, including a higher funding floor of $66,385 and discounts up to 85% on eligible Category Two services like wireless access points, switches, and basic firewalls.
Cisco and BlueAlly provide guidance through every stage— from identifying funding opportunities to ensuring compliance with CIPA requirements and deploying network solutions that meet local needs.
Resource Hub
Suggested Reading
What the Experts Say
Browse the testimony from leadership in education.
Infographics & At-a-Glance
Empower your E-Rate success with digestable education & E-Rate guides.
Cisco & E-Rate: FAQs
The E-Rate program, managed by the FCC and USAC, provides discounts of 20–85% to eligible K–12 schools and libraries to improve connectivity. Discounts apply to services such as Internet access (Category 1) and internal network infrastructure (Category 2) like switches, routers, and wireless access points.
- Category One: Internet access and data transmission services.
- Category Two: Internal connections (e.g., switches, routers, wireless access points), managed broadband services, and basic maintenance.
- Funding Floors:
- The Category Two funding floor for smaller schools and libraries has been increased from $25,000 to $30,175.
- For Tribal libraries, the fundling floor has been adjusted from $55,000 to $66,385.
- Budget Multipliers:
- For schools and school districts, the Category Two multiplier has increased from $167 per student to $201.57 per student.
- For libraries and library systems, the multiplier has been adjusted from $4.50 per square foot to $5.43 per square foot.
Cisco solutions eligible under Category Two include:
- Meraki cloud-managed switches and wireless
- Catalyst 9K series switches with DNA-Essentials
- Basic firewalls
Products must be deployed at eligible sites and used for broadband access.
The optimal time to engage is before Form 470 is filed—typically in the Fall, as the filing window opens in January. Early planning allows for budgeting, partner selection, and trialing Cisco gear before bidding restrictions begin.
Yes! Cisco partners like BlueAlly offer tools, consultations, and guidance throughout the application process —including help with CIPA compliance, budget planning, and selecting eligible technologies.
Visit https://www.cloudwifiworks.com/ or contact your BlueAlly representative for tailored E-Rate guidance and product recommendations.