Consumer Groups Reject VRS Equipment-Portability Rule
An FCC rule requiring equipment portability among video relay service providers “only creates unnecessary costs to providers,” said the National Association of the Deaf and six other consumer groups. In comments Monday, they endorsed a petition by Sprint Nextel, CSDVRS, Viable and Snap Telecom to kill the porting requirement. It was in the FCC’s June order on adopting 10-digit phone numbers for Internet-based telecom relay service. Relay provider American Network disagreed, saying the market will eventually work out the porting requirement’s kinks.
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The rule lets telecom relay service customers keep their video equipment when they switch providers, but with guarantees of retaining only basic calling features. Consumers want to keep enhanced features like call history, address books and speed dialing when changing providers, said the NAD and the other consumer groups. “Using [equipment] that has limited functionality -- solely to receive and place calls -- is akin to using an old analog, rotary-dial telephone,” they said. “Money, time, and energy are simply wasted to create a technology that neither consumers nor providers want.”
The consumer groups urged the FCC to promote greater choice in relay customer-premises equipment. Not all VRS providers make equipment, some have only devices in development and others have devices in “limited quantities with long waiting lists or backlogs,” they said. Meanwhile, third-party manufactured devices aren’t yet compatible with the new 10-digit numbering system, they said. “Customers are left with astoundingly little choice in CPE or default VRS provider.”
American Network said the providers’ petition is anti- competitive and “would amount to a significant step backward in the provision of state-of-the-art equipment to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community.” The FCC has already waived porting rules until year-end, the company said. By then, providers “will have had nearly 18 months to learn how to fully port” equipment. Even if providers can’t port all enhanced features by then, consumers will accept their loss “in the short term” if it means future full portability, it said.
The rule will encourage production of new equipment that can easily be ported without losing features, American Network said. “Equipment naturally will evolve so that advanced functionality will reside” in the customer’s device “and not in a provider’s server,” it said. Removing the portability requirement might kill manufacturers’ incentive to innovate, the company said.
Requiring portability doesn’t have to raise costs for relay service providers, American Network said. “While the FCC’s rules contemplate that TRS providers may sell or market equipment, they are under no obligation to do so.” The portability rule will encourage third-party manufacturers to build and sell relay equipment, it said. “The device and service marketplaces should be de-linked and not used -- as Petitioners would have it -- to lock customers into using a particular provider.”