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 The VRS rate proposals by the telecom relay service (TRS) fund administrator were based on “an out-of-date, rate-of-return regulation-based economic model that yields rates that are not viable for the provision of VRS,” Sorenson said.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."

Bring on the relay provider complaints. Monday marked the deadline for states and providers of interstate telecom relay services (TRS) to file a year’s worth of consumer gripes with the FCC Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau from June 1, 2011, to May 31, 2012. TRS allows people with hearing or speech disabilities to make calls via a text telephone or other device. The FCC describes a two-fold reason for the demand. The complaint logs “are intended to provide an early warning to the Commission of possible service quality issues,” and the process “also allows the Commission to determine whether a state or interstate TRS provider has appropriately addressed consumer complaints, and to spot national trends that may lend themselves to coordinated solutions,” the commission said in a recent reminder about the deadline. The complaints, which address a variety of technical and customer service problems, come in just as the FCC has shifted the rules for IP relay due to allegations of fraud from earlier this year.

The Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau adopted per-minute compensation rates to be paid from the interstate telecom relay services fund (http://xrl.us/bncx9d). Beginning July 1, the per-minute rates will be $2.03 for interstate traditional TRS; $3.16 for interstate speech-to-speech relay service; $1.77 for interstate captioned telephone service and IP captioned telephone service, and $1.29 for IP relay. The fund carrier contribution factor will be 0.01053.

States and providers of interstate telecom relay services (TRS) must submit their annual consumer complaint log summaries by July 2, according to an FCC public notice (http://xrl.us/bnb5vx). The summaries must include the total number of interstate relay service calls by type of TRS, the number of complaints alleging a violation of federal TRS mandatory minimum standards, the date and nature of the complaint, and the date and explanation of the resolution.

Purple Communications doesn’t offer recruiting or placement services for deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, it told the FCC in an ex parte last week (http://xrl.us/bm2w3k). The letter responded to a Sorenson meeting with Wireline Bureau officials to address “Purple’s practice of placing deaf individuals at call centers for employers such as Allstate,” which it said violated the commission’s rules barring the use of incentives by video relay service providers (http://xrl.us/bm2w3p). According to Purple, Sorenson’s ex parte “intentionally misstates facts and makes false and baseless allegations.” Although Purple does offer Allstate “its expertise” regarding employing the deaf and hard of hearing, Allstate employs the deaf “of its own volition,” Purple said. “Sorenson is attempting to mislead the Commission and the public by drawing conclusions and making careless allegations based upon practices that do not exist.” “Sorenson looks forward to the Commission’s decision in this matter and is confident that if such programs are deemed compensable from the Interstate TRS fund that Sorenson will significantly grow its volume of” VRS minutes, the company said in an email response.