News coverage of the DTV coupon program sent the number of coupon...

hour, the agency said. Asked to comment on our report that found bugs and peculiarities abounded when we mystery-shopped the program (CD Jan 3 p2), an NTIA spokesman said “demand is strong,” and the agency is pleased it opened for business “on schedule” Jan. 1, as the DTV statute required. In the first 48 hours after NTIA’s systems went live at 12:01 a.m. Jan. 1, over 725,000 consumers had requested more than 1.4 million coupons, NTIA said. It’s also pleased that 46 percent of those who applied on Jan. 1 certified that they were exclusively over-the-air households, it said. Other disclosures: (1) Though online ordering is available for English or Spanish, it won’t be available for other languages, the agency said. Applicants in Chinese, French, Russian, Tagalog and Vietnamese will continue to be directed to a PDF application form that can be printed out for mailing or faxing, it said. However, NTIA vowed to correct the forms to inform applicants that the coupons won’t be mailed out until late February or early March. Right now, they say the coupons will be available in two or three weeks. (2) It’s unfortunate that multiple families living at a single address can’t qualify for coupons, as our survey also found, NTIA said. NTIA decided to use the Census Bureau’s definition of a household because it’s time-tested, it said. The bureau defines a household as consisting of all persons who currently occupy a house, apartment, mobile home, group of rooms, or single room that is occupied as a separate U.S. postal address. (3) Nothing in the NTIA rules prohibits a household that already qualified for two coupons at its permanent residence to qualify for two more at a vacation home with a separate postal address, the agency said. As we found, the system will disqualify the additional coupon request if mail is sent to the permanent residence where two coupons already had been ordered, it said.