CFR

54.604—Existing contracts.

(a) Existing contracts. A signed contract for services eligible for support pursuant to this subpart between an eligible health care provider as defined under § 54.601 and a telecommunications carrier shall be exempt from the competitive bid requirements set forth in § 54.603(a) as follows:

(1) A contract signed on or before July 10, 1997 is exempt from the competitive bid requirement for the life of the contract.

(2) [Reserved]

(b) For rural health care providers that take service under or pursuant to a master contract, as defined in § 54.500(f), the date of execution of that master contract represents the applicable date for purposes of determining whether and to what extent the rural health care provider is exempt from the competitive bid requirements.

(c) The competitive bid system will be deemed to be operational when the Administrator is ready to accept and post FCC Form 465 from rural health care providers on a website and that website is available for use by telecommunications carriers.

[63 FR 2131, Jan. 13, 1998; 63 FR 33586, June 19, 1998, as amended at 63 FR 70572, Dec. 21, 1998; 64 FR 22810, Apr. 28, 1999; 71 FR 65750, Nov. 9, 2006]

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