Unless the FCC sharpens its outreach, thousands of people who are deaf may be left without functionally equivalent phone service, said consumer advocates and telecom relay service providers during a workshop Friday at the FCC. Video and IP-based relay users must register 10-digit numbers or they won’t be able to make non-emergency calls after Nov. 12 (CD Aug 12 p1). The deadline has already been extended over concerns about consumer confusion, lack of public education, and technical issues. But education problems remain, workshop attendees said.

Purple Communications urged the FCC eighth floor to seek comment on how to clarify and strengthen the agency’s telecom relay service rules. Purple met last week with Commissioner Meredith Baker and aides to Commissioners Robert McDowell, Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps, according to an ex parte filing. Purple slammed the agency’s TRS rules in a petition last month (CD Aug 18 p4), saying they “have fallen short of the policy goals outlined by Congress and the FCC.” Consumer advocates for the deaf have endorsed the Purple petition. In a letter last week to Chairman Julius Genachowski, Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing and seven other groups said Purple raised “legitimate questions regarding the rights and rules regarding TRS.” The consumer groups urged the FCC to clarify rules about what constitutes reasonable TRS provider outreach, providing free or discounted equipment and deaf consumers’ rights to functionally equivalent phone service in the workplace.

Video relay service provider CSDVRS said the FCC violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it required Internet-based relay providers to redirect users’ old toll-free numbers to their new 10-digit geographic numbers in the service management system 800 database. The FCC issued a “clarification” in a public notice last month (CD Aug 12 p5). In a petition for expedited reconsideration last week, CSDVRS said the “substantive change” hurt VRS competition, violated interoperability principles and undermined Communications Act requirements of functionally equivalent service. The rule prevents deaf consumers and businesses from receiving 800 calls made by a provider other than the called party’s default provider, CSDVRS said. That provides the consumer incentive to use only the provider with the most users, it said. The rule also hurts competition for consumers calling from public pay phones by removing 800 TRS numbers that some providers use to provide dial-around service, the company said. It violates interoperability by requiring hearing callers to use the provider chosen by the 800-number user to handle VRS calls, it said. And it restricts the opportunity of businesses owned by people who are deaf to “effectively compete with their hearing counterparts though a single 800 number that can be used by anyone wishing to call them,” it said.

The FCC should clarify “the extent to which relay services can be used to conduct outreach and marketing,” said video relay service provider CSDVRS. In a petition Tuesday, the company said “at least one” provider has “used third parties to hire deaf individuals to sit on videophones for hours on end for the purpose of calling hearing businesses via VRS … to secure agreements from these businesses to add website links” to the provider’s own site. “It is suspected that millions of minutes have been charged to the TRS Fund to serve out this function,” it said.

The FCC should add teeth to its telecom relay service rules, CSDVRS, one of the providers, said in a petition last week. The company called for specific financial penalties for violations. Customers are “being unlawfully misled by certain providers and their agents in order to garner more business and generate more compensable VRS minutes,” CSDVRS said. “Examples include threatening consumers with repossession of their videophones if they do not make more calls, telling consumers that their videophones will not function properly if they dial around to another provider, withholding features when a consumer does dial around, and other intimidating, abusive, and illegal tactics.” CSDVRS suggested a $50,000 fine for the first offense, $100,000 for the second, and a six-month ban from the interstate TRS fund for the third. For offending independent contractors or agents of VRS providers, the company suggested a $5,000 fine for the first offense, $10,000 for the second and $25,000 for any later violation. CSDVRS asked the FCC to require that an investigation be completed within three months of a complaint.

FCC rules and decisions on telecom relay services “have fallen short of the policy goals outlined by Congress and the FCC,” said provider Purple Communications. In a petition last week, the company asked the commission to “clarify and strengthen” its rules on the service. The FCC hasn’t provided comprehensive rules “but instead has issued periodic and sometimes contradictory declaratory rulings” that created marketing uncertainty, Purple said. And regulation hasn’t “kept up with the technological advances and growing deaf and hard-of-hearing participation in the workplace,” it said. The commission should at least clarify that TRS provider employees and contractors may make TRS calls, that multiparty calls between people who can’t hear and those who can are reimbursable under the interstate relay-service fund and that reasonable outreach and marketing practices to increase awareness of the service is lawful, Purple said. The petition follows a call this month by Purple Vice President Kelby Brick (CD Aug 12 p1) for the FCC to “reassert themselves as stewards for the basic civil rights of deaf and hard of hearing people to ensure communication access.”

Internet-based telecom relay service providers must redirect users’ old toll-free numbers to their new 10-digit geographic numbers in the service management system 800 database, not the Internet-based TRS numbering directory, the FCC clarified Tuesday. Toll-free numbers and 10-digit numbers shouldn’t be directed to the same uniform resource identifier in the TRS directory, the commission said. Under the 10-digit numbers plan, all Internet-based TRS users must obtain 10-digit numbers by Nov. 12, however users are allowed to keep toll-free numbers as a secondary way to be reached. The FCC said it recognizes that the clarification means that callers wishing to place a direct point-to-point or dial- around call to an Internet-based TRS user will have to use a 10-digit number. “We note, however, that such calls -- like calls to toll free numbers -- impose no additional costs on callers.”

Reform of the FCC should include more focus on issues important to deaf individuals, said executives from consumer groups and telecom relay service providers. It’s unclear how FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski views TRS issues, because he’s said little about them in public. But some matters, like the November transition to 10-digit phone numbers for Internet-based TRS, could demand significant FCC attention in the next few months.

The FCC should affirm that only one telecom relay service provider may assign phone numbers to any one device or IP address, and consider permitting only one default provider per geographic location, said Sorenson Communications. In a petition late Tuesday at the FCC, the big TRS provider said the proposed rules would advance public safety and prevent customer confusion. The FCC already requires that only one TRS company provide all numbers associated with a specific Uniform Resource Identifier to reduce the likelihood of conflicting 911 registered location data. Even so, said Sorenson, “some providers -- and some users -- have taken the view that the rules permit multiple providers to assign different telephone numbers to a single videophone.” Since one device can have only one URI, “it would appear impossible for multiple providers to assign numbers to a single device without violating the Commission’s rules,” the company said. It’s also problematic when multiple providers assign numbers to a single IP address used by multiple devices, Sorenson said. Under such an arrangement, only one device will ring, potentially confusing consumers, it said. Finally, “the notion of having multiple VRS providers at a single location is oxymoronic,” Sorenson said. “By definition, users should have a single default VRS provider that is responsible for providing 911 access and for routing all inbound and outbound calls to or from a particular location.” With a one-default-provider-per- location rule, consumers could still change their default provider, and dial around to use services of competitors, it said.

Carriers urged the FCC to mandate captioned telephone relay service, in comments Monday refreshing the record on a four-year-old petition revived last month (CD June 12 p6). AT&T backed a rulemaking, saying “the time is right to review” the matter. “While CTS is currently a valuable form of [telecom relay service], it will likely become more valuable in the future, as the demographics of the United States continue to shift to a population with a greater percentage of senior citizens,” the company said. Sprint Nextel said the FCC already has a sufficient record supporting a CTS mandate, and issuing a rulemaking notice would only cause further delay. CTS is “the only functionally equivalent PSTN-based TRS service for individuals ‘who become hearing impaired later in life,'” and the lack of a CTS mandate “has produced some untoward effects,” the company said. Three states refuse to make the service available for intrastate and interstate calling, while others restrict availability to hard-of-hearing citizens and impose conditions “contrary to the TRS standards which the FCC has found are necessary to achieve [functional] equivalency,” it said. And at least one state wants to impose a condition on CTS providers “that will all but destroy the transparency of CTS,” it said. However, the California Public Utilities Commission said it opposed “another federal mandate which likely would require California to raise its surcharge on end-user billings in a time of great fiscal crisis for this state.” California “fully intends to continue to provide CTS at the pace we have set for deploying the service,” but could only support a mandate if “the FCC intends also to ensure full federal payment of all CTS costs the states will incur,” the commission said.