FCC Revamps Video Relay Service Program
The FCC approved 3-0 an order revamping the Video Relay Service program. In addition to reducing the rates of compensation to various sized providers, interoperability provisions in the order give users the power to more easily choose providers and equipment. The order also creates a “neutral” video communication service provider that will give consumers access to a “standalone” VRS communications assistant provider of their choice.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The order moves VRS compensation rates closer to providers’ actual costs over the next four years, agency officials said Monday. The order also contemplates a transition from existing tiered TRS Fund compensation rates toward a unitary, market-based compensation rate. “By encouraging the development of interoperability and portability standards for VRS devices and establishing a neutral video communication service provider, the Commission is promoting competition in ways that will benefit consumers,” acting Chairwoman Mignon Clyburn said in a statement.
Currently, providers that handle between 500,000 and 1 million minutes per month are compensated at $5.07 per minute. As of July 1, that rate will go down to $4.82 and be frozen for three years. During those three years, the rate for the 0-500,000 minute tier comes down from $5.98 to $4.82. By year four, both of those rates will go to $4.44 for the first half, and $4.06 for the second half. This is an attempt to get closer to average provider costs, which are about $3.40, an FCC official told us. The ultimate goal is a unified rate for all tiers, for all carriers, the official said. By year four, the distance between the tiers will be around 57 cents. “It’s the beginning of a major overhaul,” an FCC official said.
Sorenson, as a large portion of the VRS market, had argued against tiered pricing (http://bit.ly/1bpoENi). “Tiers serve no valid economic purpose,” Sorenson said, but rather reward firms that haven’t been successful offering attractive VRS services. The commission largely buys the Sorenson argument that tiers are an incentive to keep providers small, an FCC official said. But the commission is reluctant to eliminate tiers until it can figure out a way to ensure that there’s a level playing field with no anti-competitive practices, the official said.
The order creates a “VRS access technology reference platform,” which will “provide a concrete example of a standards specific VRS access technology implementation and will allow providers to ensure that any VRS access technology they develop or deploy is fully compliant with our interoperability and portability requirements,” the order said. There was “universal support” for this proposal in the record, the order said.
The neutral video communication service provider will provide several features, including user registration and validation, authentication, and authorization. “The creation of a neutral video communication service provider will have multiple beneficial effects, the most obvious being in the promotion of more efficient and effective VRS CA service competition,” the order said. “The availability of a neutral platform will eliminate a significant barrier to entry: the cost of building and maintaining a video communication service platform."
In comments filed Friday, VRS provider Purple encouraged the commission to “harmonize the timing of any rate reductions with the implementation of corresponding competition policy reform in order to correct the current market imbalance and anticompetitive practices of the monopolist provider, and allow the industry to perform at a more efficient level with multiple providers operating at scale” (http://bit.ly/13yh41y).