§  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]