WASHINGTON-Lucent Technologies Inc. last week disclosed it has been asked to supply documentation to a federal grand jury in Georgia examining antitrust violations of the schools and libraries subsidy program known as the E-rate.
The subpoena “relates to a Department of Justice investigation of potential antitrust and other violations by various participants in connection with the federal E-rate program. The subpoena requires us to produce documents before a grand jury of the U.S. District Court in Georgia,” Lucent told the Securities and Exchange Commission. “It is too early for us to determine whether this matter will have a material effect on our business, financial position, results of operations or cash flows.”
The E-rate program is a $2.25 billion annual program to help schools and libraries connect to the Information Superhighway created in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Fiscal conservatives have been highly critical of the program and have encouraged aggressive investigations to ward off waste, fraud and abuse of the program.
