Compromise Possible on IP Relay 10-Digit Numbering
Relay service providers should specify the parts they like in three proposals to assign 10-digit phone numbers to Internet-based relay service users, FCC Wireline Bureau Chief Dana Shaffer said at a commission workshop Tuesday. Last month, the FCC said it would choose a plan this quarter and carry out ten-digit dialing this year. Without more input, the FCC could choose a plan with parts that relay providers don’t like, Shaffer said. “Let’s start talking to each other, because we don’t have much time.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
Deaf people want 10-digit numbers as soon as possible and decision-makers must not delay their arrival, said Claude Stout, executive director of Telecommunications for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Video relay service (VRS) and other IP relay users now must dial a relay provider to set up a call, even to reach 911. A 10-digit plan would let users who are deaf make and receive relay calls without the extra step.
NeuStar, CSDVRS and a group made up of AT&T, GoAmerica and Dash Carrier Services have pitched proposals. The groups flag security, implementation time and functional equivalency with hearing users’ systems as major differences.
No proposal has the support of most relay providers, Paul Ludwick, Sprint Relay’s business development manager, said at the workshop. All the suggestions have good parts but none meets everyone’s needs, he said. The FCC should find where there’s consensus and make a compromise plan, he said. Shaffer appeared to support the idea but indicated that current filings from relay providers may not provide enough detail. Shaffer asked Ludwick whether Sprint has told the FCC which parts of each plan it supports. “Not to that level of specificity,” he said.
A compromise plan as suggested by Ludwick is “not necessarily a bad thing, so long as it meets consumer needs” said Karen Strauss, a consultant to CSDVRS. Some issues are “separable” and could be melded into a compromise solution, Neustar Senior Director Brian Rosen said in an interview. “There are issues [where] you can run the Chinese menu and choose one from column A and one from column B… We can try and take the best ones.”
Sorenson, an “800 pound gorilla” relay provider with majority market share, could be keeping smaller relay providers from contributing, said Kelby Brick, GoAmerica regulatory and strategic policy vice president, in an interview. Sorenson hasn’t “aggressively” pursued a 10-digit system, and other relay providers may feel uncomfortable moving forward until it does, he said.
If the FCC’s goal was to increase discussion, the workshop succeeded, Strauss said. The workshop was helpful for outsiders but not for plan proposers or relay providers, said Brian Rosen, Neustar senior director. The forum gave some issues more exposure, but marketing distorted the debate, he said.
Consumers Seek ‘Equivalency’
Advocates for deaf people said they want a phone system functionally the same as for consumers who hear. “Don’t put us in a separate system,” Stout said. Deaf people should be able to use any device and pick any relay provider, he said.
The FCC should reject the CSDVRS plan because it doesn’t ride on an established system, said NorCal Center on Deafness CEO Sheri Mutti. Deaf consumers won’t be confident using a system with no track record, she said. Mutti also has concerns about whether any of the proposals can be carried out promptly, she said.
The GoAmerica proposal is based on VoIP and requires no changes in current carrier processes, Brick said. The Neustar proposal also works like VoIP and uses existing processes, Rosen said. The CSDVRS is the only plan compatible with all equipment sold at retail, said Strauss. Other plans would require providers to distribute or approve equipment, she said. To aid integration among relay and non- relay users, the CSDVRS plan puts a single database of relay users’ location information on the public Internet. The other plans place relay users’ location information in closed databases accessible only to relay providers, Strauss said.
But officials representing the Neustar and GoAmerica plans said using the public Internet poses major security risks. Each database entry identifies the user as deaf and provides their telephone number and IP address. Putting that information on a public system could leave deaf users vulnerable to hackers and marketers, said Penn Pfautz, AT&T director of new product development. The AT&T-GoAmerica group initially considered using the public Internet, but scrapped the plan after talking to relay providers and users, he said.
The CSDVRS plan doesn’t make users’ geographic location publicly available, and information is encrypted, Strauss said. The database is built on the Domain Name System, which “withstands attacks daily,” said William Cobb, CSDVRS network engineering vice president. “The system is constantly improving and evolving to maintain high reliability.”
Consumer groups asked whether relay providers might run out of phone numbers for the deaf. But North American Numbering Council chair Tom Koutsky said he “wouldn’t be that worried.” Relay providers would work with carriers to get numbers much like VoIP carriers do, he said. Numbers could dry up in a small, rural wire center, he said, but “even in that context there are work-arounds.”