Companies Fined $1.4M for Failing To Accept 911 Calls for Hard of Hearing
The FCC Enforcement Bureau reached settlements totaling $1.4 million with Hamilton Relay, InnoCaption and Sprint for failing to properly handle 911 calls through applications used by callers who are hard of hearing, said orders (see here, here and here) Thursday. Sprint will pay $1.18 million, Hamilton will pay $235,000, and InnoCaption will pay $25,000, and each company will file detailed compliance reports with the Enforcement bureau, the orders said. "Not only are we fining these companies for failing to provide this vital services, but we are assuring that they provide it going forward," said bureau Chief Travis LeBlanc in a news release.
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The companies admitted that their actions violated rules and have agreed to adopt compliance plans, the FCC said. The plans contain measures to ensure that the companies all adhere to FCC emergency call handling requirements for IP captioned telephone service (IP CTS) providers, educate consumers on emergency calling, and strengthen policies and procedures for detection and notification of 911 call handling issues.
The settlements also require each company to implement management processes to identify risks that could result in 911 call failures; protect against and detect future 911 failures; respond to failures with remedial actions, including notification to consumers; and recover from failures on a timely basis. The companies also agreed to waive all reimbursements from the Telephone Relay Service (TRS) Fund associated with IP CTS applications during the time that 911 calls couldn't be handled, the FCC said.
Through test calls made in 2014, the Enforcement Bureau and Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau discovered that the companies couldn't accept or handle 911 emergency calls made using IP CTS applications, as required by FCC rules governing TRS, the commission said. Over periods varying from five weeks to about 10 months, the companies weren't only unable to relay 911 calls from callers who are hard of hearing but also were unaware of it until the FCC told them about the problem, the release said. The bureau also found that the companies submitted inaccurate requests for TRS Fund compensation, the FCC said. The amount of time the companies were out of compliance varied, the investigation found.
The failure affected Sprint's wireless IP CTS service, which is a small percentage of the company's overall IP CTS traffic, said a Sprint spokeswoman. The company began working with its vendor as soon as it was made aware of the issue, she said. The company resolved the problem within 24 hours of being notified of it, she said. The company discovered that an error during a vendor's routine maintenance procedure resulted in the resetting of the communications path for 911 calls, she said. As a result, 911 calls weren't placed in a high-priority queue ahead of nonemergency calls and the calls errored-out and were disconnected, the spokeswoman said. "Thankfully no [actual] customer calls were impacted," she said. "Sprint has upgraded testing protocols to prevent this type of issue in the future."
Hamilton Relay Vice President Dixie Ziegler said the company supports the FCC's effort to address 911 and it's dedicated to providing 911 capabilities from all of its TRS platforms. InnoCaption didn't immediately comment.
Meanwhile, Hamilton Relay and Sprint Relay filed an FCC petition for rulemaking to modify TRS providers’ equal access and billing option requirements, because they were "adopted more than twenty years ago for a very different communications landscape," said the Sprint spokeswoman. Now, the majority of all phone subscribers don't charge per-minute for long-distance calls, and well over 90 percent of all compensable TRS minutes are carried via Internet-based TRS technologies, she said. "We believe removal of these outdated obligations will result in a better user experience, a more efficient TRS program and a smoother transition to new IP-based technologies." Sprint also filed a petition for interim waiver of the two mandatory minimum requirements that apply to the company's traditional TRS and CTS offerings.