(a) Eligible services. Subject to the provisions of §§54.600 through 54.602 and 54.607 through 54.633, eligible health care providers may request support under the Healthcare Connect Fund Program for any advanced telecommunications or information service that enables health care providers to post their own data, interact with stored data, generate new data, or communicate, by providing connectivity over private dedicated networks or the public internet for the provision of health information technology.

(b) Eligibility of dark fiber. A consortium of eligible health care providers may receive support for “dark” fiber where the customer, not the service provider, provides the modulating electronics, subject to the following limitations:

(1) Support for recurring charges associated with dark fiber is only available once the dark fiber is “lit” and actually being used by the health care provider. Support for non-recurring charges for dark fiber is only available for fiber lit within the same funding year, but applicants may receive up to a one-year extension to light fiber, consistent with §54.626(b), if they provide documentation to the Administrator that construction was unavoidably delayed due to weather or other reasons.

(2) Requests for proposals that solicit dark fiber solutions must also solicit proposals to provide the needed services over lit fiber over a time period comparable to the duration of the dark fiber lease or indefeasible right of use.

(3) If an applicant intends to request support for equipment and maintenance costs associated with lighting and operating dark fiber, it must include such elements in the same request for proposal as the dark fiber so that the Administrator can review all costs associated with the fiber when determining whether the applicant chose the most cost-effective bid.

(c) Dark and lit fiber maintenance costs.

(1) Both individual and consortium applicants may receive support for recurring maintenance costs associated with leases of dark or lit fiber.

(2) Consortium applicants may receive support for upfront payments for maintenance costs associated with leases of dark or lit fiber, subject to the limitations in §54.616.

(d) Reasonable and customary installation charges. Eligible health care providers may obtain support for reasonable and customary installation charges for eligible services, up to an undiscounted cost of $5,000 per eligible site.

(e) Upfront charges for service provider deployment of new or upgraded facilities.

(1) Participants may obtain support for upfront charges for service provider deployment of new or upgraded facilities to serve eligible sites.

(2) Support is available to extend service provider deployment of facilities up to the “demarcation point,” which is the boundary between facilities owned or controlled by the service provider, and facilities owned or controlled by the customer.