2026 470 Application - Charter School Associates - Internet and managed firewall service

Category 1: Charter School Associates consortium seeks an internet access solution for 16 member schools, with one dedicated circuit per school, each providing a minimum of 5 Gbps and a maximum of 10 Gbps or equivalent. Full and partial bids will be accepted and evaluated. Charter Schools Associates would prefer that all services above be billed under one managed service provider or equivalent, on one monthly bill, if available. Charter Schools Associates would prefer 1 provider that can provide service to all locations.
Please see the attached document for the list of the schools/locations.
Please include quotes for whatever contract lengths/options you can offer.
Please include any installation/configuration and/or special construction/build-out costs as well as quotes for any network components that are necessary to deliver your service that will be billed separately.
As per E-Rate rules, all equivalent solutions will be accepted and evaluated.
Vendors - Please include your SPIN and the 470 number with your proposal. Please be advised that the numbers above are approximate. Please list all assumptions used in creating your proposals. The preferred mode of contact is email. The applicant takes no responsibility for phone inquiries. Please email all bid responses to this 470 Application to both the applicant contact person listed under Contact Information on the 470 Application and the consultant (kristin@erateadvantage.com). If a separate proposal is not received from the incumbent service provider, bills from the incumbent service providers may be considered bids for this E-Rate year. All proposals must comply with FCC LCP rules as well as state and local laws. By submitting a bid on the requested services herein, the vendor certifies that its proposed prices are consistent with the FCCs Lowest Corresponding Price (LCP) requirements and that its equipment and services are compliant with the FCCs Security Rules Order (FCC 19-121) prohibiting the sale, provision, maintenance, modification, or other support of equipment or services provided or manufactured by Huawei, ZTE Corporation, or any other covered company deemed a national security threat.
Category 2: Charter School Associates consortium would like quotes for Managed Firewall/managed firewall service or equivalent for 17 of their entities (18 total entities in terms of recipients of service). One of the entities has two recipients of service but they are located at the same location and will share the managed firewall/service for that location. The entities are listed in the first column on the attached document. Please provide quotes for the following products/services for all 17 entities. As you will see on the spreadsheet, one of the entities will likely be ineligible for E-Rate funding, in which case, the funding for their services will be cost allocated out.
Managed Firewall/ Managed Firewall Service or equivalent (preferably Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) or equivalent or Firewall as a Service (FWaaS) or equivalent) with the following preferred specs:
- Minimum 10Gbps throughput speed for dual WAN circuits, with full security services enabled at maximum capacity. The solution should provide centralized management capabilities and support the total throughput required for IPSec VPN tunnels to ensure secure and efficient network operations. - Next-generation Firewall (NGFW) or equivalent with complete edge protection or equivalent; Palo Alto/Fortinet/Cisco/VMware or equivalent; Example of Preferred model: FortiGate 200F or equivalent
Example of preferred solution: - Managed Internal Broadband Services - Cloud Firewall Fortinet FortiGate 200F (or equivalent) with full UTM Bundle or equivalent/ security services enabled at maximum capacity - Fully Managed and Monitored Solution - 24x7 FortiCare + FortiGuard UTM Bundle (or equivalent), with all security services fully enabled - 27 Gbps Firewall Throughput - 5 Gbps IPS Throughput (Enterprise Mix) - 3.5 Gbps Next-Generation Firewall (NGFW) or equivalent Throughput - 3 Gbps Threat Protection Throughput - Dual Power Supplies for high availability / fault tolerance - System Capacity / Performance Considerations - Up to 3 million concurrent TCP sessions - New sessions: ~280,000/sec - Firewall policies: ~10,000 - IPsec VPN throughput: up to 13 Gbps
Charter School Associates consortium does not want to purchase new firewalls. They want quotes for leased MIBS or equivalent/managed firewall services or equivalent.
Please include quotes for whatever contract lengths/options you can offer for this service.
Please include any installation/configuration costs as well as quotes for any network components that are necessary to deliver your service that will be billed separately.
As per E-Rate rules, all equivalent solutions will be accepted and evaluated.
Vendors - Please include your SPIN and the 470 number with your proposal. Please be advised that the numbers above are approximate. Please list all assumptions used in creating your proposals. The preferred mode of contact is email. The applicant takes no responsibility for phone inquiries. Please email all bid responses to this 470 Application to both the applicant contact person listed under Contact Information on the 470 Application and the consultant (kristin@erateadvantage.com). If a separate proposal is not received from the incumbent service provider, bills from the incumbent service providers may be considered bids for this E-Rate year. All proposals must comply with FCC LCP rules as well as state and local laws. By submitting a bid on the requested services herein, the vendor certifies that its proposed prices are consistent with the FCCs Lowest Corresponding Price (LCP) requirements and that its equipment and services are compliant with the FCCs Security Rules Order (FCC 19-121) prohibiting the sale, provision, maintenance, modification, or other support of equipment or services provided or manufactured by Huawei, ZTE Corporation, or any other covered company deemed a national security threat.
Requested services (2 line items): - Category 2 — Managed Internal Broadband Services — Leased Equipment - Category 1 — Data Transmission And/Or Internet Access — Internet Access And Data Transmission Service
Reference documents (Form 470 / RFP): https://publicdata.usac.org/EPC/Prd/Form470/260007340/17020058/20668620-USAC_FCC_FORM_470_APPLICATION_260007340_CERTIFIED.pdf, https://publicdata.usac.org/EPC/Prd/Form470/260007340/17020058/20668356-2026%20Charter%20School%20Associates%20consortium%20locations.pdf