No relay provider should read the FCC order on a 10- digit number...
No relay provider should read the FCC order on a 10- digit numbering plan for Internet-based telecom relay services (CD Aug 18 p8) as empowering to complicate consumers’ efforts to access alternative providers by dialing around, TRS provider CSDVRS…
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said. In a petition for clarification, CSDVRS said it fears that relay providers might get the wrong idea from “the FCC’s new emphasis on having a default provider” handling nearly all inbound and outbound calls for registered users. The FCC should clarify that no default provider is allowed to “create barriers that would impede or discourage a user” from dialing around, including “pop-up screens or warning messages, or degradation of the TRS call, video quality or video interpreter capabilities,” it said. The default provider rule is “flawed because of two fundamental differences” between relay services and regular switched-based or VoIP voice calls, CSDVRS said. The required speed of answer for relay services is “not at all functionally equivalent to the dial tone enjoyed by voice telephone users,” and “there is no fiduciary relationship” between a relay user and default provider, it said. The differences “raise questions about having to rely on the default provider for all incoming and outgoing calls, and make all the more critical the need for clear FCC guidance requiring all providers to facilitate calls to competing providers.”