Pennsylvania’s Public Utility Commission voted 4-0 Thursday to allow AT&T to increase its base rate for traditional telecom relay service. Citing labor costs, the telco has sought since September to charge the state 28 percent more for traditional speech-to-speech and Spanish relay services, and for related intrastate calls. Commissioners passed a motion by Chairman James Cawley and Vice Chairman Tyrone Christy allowing AT&T an 18 percent increase in its base TRS rate. An AT&T relay center in western Pennsylvania employs about 170 people, Christy noted: “We must strive to keep the current TRS center in Pennsylvania so that these key jobs and essential services are provided through this Commonwealth’s resources."

The FCC issued a declaratory ruling reaffirming rules and policies on video relay services reimbursement and calling practices. The Telecommunications Relay Services Fund “can’t be used to support practices that are designed only to increase payments to VRS providers, rather than providing a necessary service for people who need it,” said Joel Gurin, the Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau chief. The “action emphasized that VRS calls made or arranged to generate per-minute fees for the providers are not and have never been compensable from the TRS Fund,” the commission said in a news release. Video relay services calls within the United States can’t be compensated from the fund. The commission also emphasized that the cost of calls made by or to employees of VRS providers and their subcontractors are compensable as a business expense. The ruling also attempts to stop abuse of voice carry over “to make free long distance calls between two people using their voices.”

The FCC extended until July 1 a waiver of mandatory minimum standards for telecom relay service related to: (1) one-line Voice Carry Over, VCO-to-teletype (TTY) and VCO-to- VCO; (2) one-line Hearing Carry Over, HCO-to-TTY and HCO-to- HCO; (3) call release; (4) pay-per-call 900 calls; (5) operator-assisted and long distance calls; (6) equal access to interexchange carrier; (7) Speech-to-Speech. In an order Thursday, the Wireline and Consumer and Governmental Affairs bureaus also extended a waiver of certain minimum standards for default Internet-based TRS providers that are unable to meet the standards for newly registered iTRS users that own customer premises equipment built by their previous provider. That waiver also expires July 1, unless the commission tackles pending petitions regarding CPE portability first, the bureaus said.

Responding to problems experienced by telecom relay service users completing point-to-point calls using toll-free numbers, the FCC Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau temporarily waived a rule requiring providers to redirect users’ old toll-free numbers to their new 10-digit geographic numbers in the service management system 800 database. The order, adopted and released Friday, is effective for four months. Advocates for people who are deaf and some providers had notified the commission of the issue (CD Dec 3 p12). The FCC also granted a request by consumer groups to restore working, assigned video relay service and IP-based relay toll-free numbers to the Internet-based TRS numbering directory that were removed in August. “These steps will ensure that all calls -- including point-to-point calls to toll free numbers -- can be routed while the Commission considers toll free number policies in the context of Internet based TRS,” the bureau said. Earlier, in a call Wednesday with Wireline Bureau Associate Chief Nicholas Alexander, the consumer advocates said they supported opening a rulemaking to develop a means to reduce toll-free number use and eliminate abuse, according to an ex-parte filing by Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing.

The FCC said it’s tightening oversight of video relay services (VRS)after the Justice Department charged 26 people with stealing more than $50 million total from the video relay service program. After a joint investigation by the FBI, U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the FCC Office of Inspector General, FBI agents and postal inspectors made arrests Thursday in New York, New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Maryland, Justice said. Meanwhile, VRS provider Purple Communications said it expects its Q3 revenue to dive $7.2 million from a year earlier unless the FCC loosens its compensation rules.

FCC rules should “specifically and expressly” address internal use of video relay service by providers, and use of VRS for conference calling, CSDVRS said. In a petition Tuesday, the VRS company urged the agency to begin a rulemaking. The rules “as currently defined are, in many respects, limiting to the functional equivalency mandate, and can invite fraud on the Interstate TRS Fund,” the company said.

Serving people with disabilities must be a high priority of U.S. broadband policy, said FCC Commissioners Michael Copps, Mignon Clyburn and Robert McDowell, during a commission field hearing at Gallaudet University, a school in D.C. for people with impaired hearing. “It’s not just something nice for us to do,” said Copps, who hosted the event. “It’s their right. … Access denied is opportunity denied.” Marlee Matlin, an actress who has won an Academy Award and is deaf, called for closed captioning in video media streaming online. The hearing followed an FCC order late Thursday clearing up outstanding technical issues related to the Nov. 12 transition of Internet-based telecom relay services to 10-digit phone numbers.

The telecom relay service industry confronts “a major challenge arising from the lack of FCC rules delineating the types of calls that are compensable and the types that are not,” said TRS provider Sorenson Communications. In a meeting last week with an aide to Chairman Julius Genachowski, Sorenson asked the commission to quickly open a rulemaking on the subject. “Although Sorenson and certain other providers have implemented some internal operating procedures to fill this regulatory void, the result is a patchwork of disparate approaches,” the company said. “Furthermore, it appears that some providers -- emboldened by the lack of enforceable rules -- have begun to manufacture calls of dubious legitimacy, apparently confident that the FCC will have no legal basis to bring enforcement actions against them.”

Telecom relay service provider Purple Communications urged the FCC to reject a Sorenson petition seeking a rule that only one TRS provider may assign phone numbers to any one device or IP address (CD Aug 6 p4). In an opposition filing Monday, Purple said the petition is “another attempt by Sorenson to leverage its near monopolistic control over the video relay service (VRS) endpoint -- or VRS customer premises equipment (CPE) -- market to strengthen its dominant position (estimated at between 70-80 percent) in the VRS services market.” Granting the petition would hurt competition and violate the civil rights of consumers to choose their own relay provider, Purple said.

Sorenson Communications urged the FCC to clarify what types of telecom relay service (TRS) calls may be legally compensated for by the interstate TRS fund. In a petition for rulemaking, the TRS provider said existing haziness on what’s acceptable “imperils the statutory goals and the integrity of the Fund by permitting providers -- especially Internet-based TRS providers -- to seek compensation for handling an ever-expanding array of calls of dubious legitamacy.” Rules could save the fund “millions of dollars per year,” it said. Sorenson also proposed requiring providers to try to stop “minute-pumping or other illicit schemes that could artificially inflate a provider’s call volume,” and rules giving TRS communications assistants “discretion to disconnect or interrupt” calls that likely shouldn’t be compensated.