COAT recommendation: Extend existing telecommunications relay service (TRS) obligations, including the obligation to contribute to the interstate relay fund that supports these services, to all communication service providers, including VoIP and cable providers that enable conversations to take place between two or more people.

Who will benefit? There are currently 28-31 million Americans with hearing loss and several additional millions of persons with speech disabilities. Moreover, it is predicted that aging baby boomers will expand the population of people with hearing loss to 78 million by 2030. (Newsweek, 2005)[1] For a good portion of those people, TRS is and will be their only link to businesses, friends and family who use traditional phones. In addition, TRS-facilitated phone calls are regularly used by members of the general population to communicate with persons who have hearing and speech disabilities.

Current law: Section 225 of the Communications Act (47 U.S.C. §225), as added by Title IV of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-336), requires common carriers to provide TRS nationwide. Among other things, this law requires carriers to make annual contributions based on their end-of-the-year revenues to a federally administered fund that supports the provision of these services (Interstate TRS Fund). It also requires all carriers to complete relay calls initiated by dialing 711 anywhere in the United States.
Why it is not enough: Although the vast majority of relay calls are now being handled over the Internet, the actual requirement to provide TRS under Section 225 has not been extended to Internet-based communication providers. Specifically, the FCC has not yet exercised its ancillary jurisdiction to require VoIP or cable Internet providers who provide voice communication services to contribute to the Interstate TRS Fund. The recent decline in consumer reliance on traditional PSTN-based telephone services, coupled with a spiraling increase in the demand for innovative IP text and video based relay services, threaten to put funding support for relay services in jeopardy. If incumbent telephone wireline and wireless providers must contribute to the TRS Fund, then interconnected VoIP and cable providers should have to do so as well, in order to sustain the viability of the nation’s interstate relay service program. The failure to impose relay obligations on VoIP providers has also meant that relay users cannot always use these services to access relay services through 711 dialing, a hardship for relay users.

Legal feasibility: In June of 2006, the FCC used its ancillary jurisdiction to begin requiring VoIP services that interconnect with the public switched telephone network to contribute to the Universal Service Fund.[2] A similar obligation can and should be placed on VoIP and cable communication providers with respect to the Interstate TRS Fund. Similarly, these providers should have to comply with other relay obligations, including outreach obligations and the obligation to handle relay calls initiated by dialing 711.

[1] Many of these older Americans are likely to use a form of relay service called captioned telephone relay service, which allows people with residual hearing to both hear and read text of telephone responses. See http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/trs.html for a complete description of all the types of TRS. Generally TRS uses a relay operator, called a communications assistant, to read text or interpret into sign language what the person with a disability types or signs to a hearing person, and to type or sign responses back from the hearing person. Complete confidentiality of relay calls is required under FCC regulations, and users of relay services cannot be charged extra for the cost of making relay calls above what voice users would pay to make a call of the same distance and duration.

[2] Report and Order and Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, In the Matter of Universal Service Contribution Methodology, No. 90-571 (FCC June 27, 2006).