Hearing Aid Order Would Hurt Rollout of Wi-Fi Phones
The Wireless Bureau is proposing that all Wi-Fi-enabled phones -- including those that can also be used to place standard calls on a cellular network -- be excluded from the list of phones compatible with hearing aids, sources said Thursday. The action could discourage carriers from adding Wi-Fi phones in their stores and set back efforts to open wireless networks, sources said.
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T-Mobile, which is pushing its lineup of Wi-Fi-enabled phones is among the companies that would be the most affected, along with handset manufacturers like Motorola, Ericsson and Nokia, sources said. Carriers could still offer hearing-aid compatible phones, but they wouldn’t count against the companies’ commitments to make larger numbers of the phones available to customers.
The bureau is circulating an item largely adopting a consensus plan that the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions gave the FCC in June. But a proposed order makes some important changes, including the exclusion of multiple-band phones that offer Wi-Fi from the list of hearing-aid compatible phones.
Patrick Donovan, director of government affairs at TIA, said Thursday his group has asked commissioners to adopt the consensus plan as submitted by industry and the hard-of- hearing community. “The Joint Consensus Plan represents many months of discussion and negotiation to reach a balanced set of reforms to the commission’s HAC rules,” Donovan said.
“The commission’s proposal to exclude automatically from HAC portfolio counts any handsets including bands or air interfaces for which HAC [hearing aid compatible] technical standards had yet to be established would be a solution in search of a problem,” Donovan said. TIA believes the commission should focus on “known interference issues in specific bands or air interfaces,” he said.
Jim Kohlenberger, executive director of the Voice on the Net Coalition, said excluding Wi-Fi enable handsets “could prevent people with hearing disabilities from taking advantage of new technologies that in many ways have breakthrough features… That could be a step backward for people with disabilities.”