The FCC’s interim measures to prevent misuse of the IP Captioned Telephone Service (CTS) saw universal support from commenters, who generally urged that most or all of the interim changes become permanent. The commission adopted the measures in a January order. However, some commenters cautioned that further study is needed before making permanent a default “off” position of IP CTS devices and software to prevent inadvertent use, warning of harm to the hard-of-hearing community.

Systems at State Department's Directorate of Defense Trade Controls will undergo network maintenance Feb. 2 from 8 a.m. until 8 p.m. EST, DDTC said. As a result, during that time the DTrade system will be unavailable to accept submissions, EFS, TRS, ELLIE and MARY will be unavailable, and the pmddtc.state.gov website will be unavailable, it said.

Hamilton Relay spoke with aides to FCC commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel Tuesday about improvements to the Telecommunications Relay Service (http://xrl.us/boaek6). The TRS provider agrees with consumer groups that adopting a 70 dB standard of hearing loss for eligibility is “unsupportable in either the record or the scientific literature,” it said. Hamilton opposes any eligibility standard tied to decibel loss; rather, consumers could have additional eligibility options to receive a free Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service phone if they provide a certification, Hamilton said. Third-party certification is unnecessary when consumers need to pay a sufficient amount for an IP CTS telephone, Hamilton said. He said “$99 is a sufficient price point to confirm that the user legitimately needs the service while also helping to offset the cost of the phone.” Hamilton said it could quickly implement a “default-off requirement,” in which its phones’ caption feature be defaulted to the off position. The company opposes referral fees, kickbacks and other marketing practices that are “inconsistent with precedent and good government of the TRS Fund,” it said.

Video relay service (VRS) provider CSDVRS agreed to pay nearly $1.4 million to settle two FCC investigations into allegations of improper payments from the federal telecommunications relay service fund that supports VRS, an FCC spokesman said Tuesday. The 2011 investigations by the Enforcement Bureau looked at whether the provided improperly billed the fund for VRS calls that were actually generated by its own employees, whether the company routed calls through uncertified providers, and whether a broadband application used by the company failed to fully transmit calls. According to the settlement (http://xrl.us/bn2pq4), CSDVRS will repay the TRS fund more than $480,000 in overpayments and interest, and make a $900,000 voluntary contribution to the U.S. Treasury, the FCC said. “This settlement is the latest in the Commission’s efforts to ensure the continued integrity of the Fund and the reliability and quality of TRS service,” said Bureau Chief Michele Ellison. “We urge all TRS providers to take note and toe the line, as we expect strict compliance in this area."

The FCC would be acting in an arbitrary and capricious manner in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act if it doesn’t seek an “economically feasible rate plan that supports [a] functionally equivalent” Video Relay Service (VRS), Sorenson Communications told aides to Chairman Julius Genachowski. That’s according to an ex parte filing (http://xrl.us/bnznru). The VRS rate proposals by the telecom relay service (TRS) fund administrator were based on “an out-of-date, rate-of-return regulation-based economic model that yields rates that are not viable for the provision of VRS,” Sorenson said. For example, the proposed ultimate rate of $3.40 per minute, and the transitional Tier 3 rates, are “substantially below the costs of any VRS provider,” the company said. “Pushing Sorenson or any other VRS provider into insolvency endangers VRS service itself.” Sorenson criticized proposals to mandate the use of a single software-based VRS application, and to transform the TRS database into a single communications provider that verifies all VRS users. These proposals would “deprive VRS consumers of competition, choice, and innovation,” the company said.

Any Alaskan telecom relay service (TRS) provider should “remain mindful of the confidential nature of the data it will handle,” a rural coalition of telcos told the Regulatory Commission of Alaska Wednesday. These data are “competitively sensitive,” it said. Alaska’s relay provider, Communications Services for the Deaf, receives data from the state’s telcos and had previously put the data in a public monthly report, with “granular detail, including subscriber line counts broken down by business and residential customers,” it said. Once the concern was raised, the relay provider submitted the data in a redacted form, the coalition said. It proposed an alternative to redacted filings, and suggested the TRS provider give “a public compilation of all LEC data, presented as aggregations of all individual LECs’ data by category (i.e. residential lines, single-line business lines, multi-line business lines).” The coalition asked future TRS applicants to remember the confidential nature of the data, especially due to what it called a far more competitive telecom market of the last decade.

Broadband ISPs excoriated the FCC for adopting unrealistic standards for its Section 706 report on the state of broadband deployment, in comments filed Thursday and Friday in docket 12-228. In response to a notice of inquiry asking what factors the commission should consider for its ninth report (http://xrl.us/bnqtzn), the telcos and cable companies aired some longstanding grievances about the commission’s findings the last three years that broadband was not being deployed on a “reasonable and timely fashion” (CD Aug 22 p1). States spoke of the need for the commission to tweak its USF rules to enable faster deployment of broadband, and interest groups expressed a need for a faster definition of broadband to enable more data-hungry applications.

DALLAS -- Rent-a-Center’s RAC Acceptance rent-to-own kiosk division is pitching NATM members at a conference here, hoping to expand on the five retailers that have deployed the concept.

Consumer groups representing the deaf and hard of hearing support a third-party registration system for IP Relay and possibly other forms of Telecommunications Relay Service, they told FCC officials Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bnm2tf). While most hard-of-hearing people prefer other forms of TRS, such as Video Relay Service or IP Captioned Telephone Service, a large percentage use IP Relay as backup when their primary form of TRS is unavailable, the National Association of the Deaf said in its ex parte filing describing the meeting. Registration must not be burdensome, and the consumer groups were strongly opposed to requiring users to provide or verify their Social Security numbers to receive TRS, the filing said. They also opposed requiring the submission of documentation or proof that consumers are deaf or hard of hearing, such as an audiogram. “We believe that the best way to determine whether a person is indeed deaf or hard of hearing is through self-identification. This will ensure that all deaf and hard of hearing people are able to benefit from relay services and none will inadvertently be denied necessary telecommunications access,” NAD said.

Telecommunications Relay Service providers should have reasonable and justifiable exceptions to a requirement to provide a local telephone number to all TRS end-users ubiquitously across the country, Bandwidth.com representatives told FCC Wireline Bureau officials Tuesday (http://xrl.us/bngnha). Bandwidth also discussed the difficulties of establishing local calling capabilities across the country, especially the “economic and operational implications of servicing the final ten to fifteen percent of the smallest markets in the country as a competitive carrier."