FCC Aims to Update Relay Services for All-IP World, ‘Neutral’ Communications Platform

"Our effort, starting today, is an invitation” to researchers, users of relay services, technologists and companies “to help the FCC enhance -- improve to the extent possible -- relay services, so that all Americans may benefit,” said Jonathan Chambers, chief of the Office of Strategic Planning. Commissioner Mignon Clyburn opened the workshop by saying “millions were left unable to complete a basic phone call” until TTY services came into existence. But today, because of advancements in technology, they can do so “on parity with their peers,” she said.

Relay services were an “early pioneer” for services that are now used on a larger scale, said FCC Chief Technologist Henning Schulzrinne. For instance, text-to-911 was driven by the needs of those who were unable to make voice calls, and it will soon be expanded to those who can use the service when speaking to a 911 operator isn’t feasible, he said. “Instead of seeing relay services as a niche thing that just is useful for a relatively small number of people … we now have technologies where text, video and voice can and should be integrated into everyday communication technology. That fundamentally allows us to do things that were never possible before."

"There must not be a rush to replace the current system, but rather develop new options for access that supplement what we have now, rather than suppress the access we currently enjoy,” said Andrew Phillips, policy counsel at National Association of the Deaf (NAD). Many hours of research and FCC time have gone into creating the IP-based system that’s been in place for 10 years, Phillips said. NAD has “reservations” about how the platform will continue to improve and adopt new types of technology, he said. It’s important to NAD that providers be able to freely add new technology to whatever system is developed, he said. IP-based providers rush to make their products available on new smartphone platforms, and this “constant drive” for improvement must be maintained, perhaps by encouraging provider competition by allowing them to keep their own platforms and compete on them, Phillips said.

It’s important that the FCC not get “stuck in a mindset of relay services being a separate service from mainstream telecom,” said Christian Vogler, director-technology access program at Gallaudet University for the deaf and hearing impaired. That model worked when industry only had the public switched telephone network and when mainstream offerings weren’t good enough for good relay calls, but it’s important to leave that thinking behind in an IP world that contains a wide range of services the provide “functional equivalence,” he said. In informal surveys of his students, Vogler has found that all of them use Apple FaceTime, while only 15 percent use mobile video relay service apps. “We don’t need a closed system,” Vogler said. “We need a system that lets consumers use whatever they need."

"FaceTime, by the way, is a closed system,” Chambers responded. “In a way it’s part of the problem.” FaceTime users can contact each other, but they can’t use the program to call users of Purple or Sorenson “because there’s no interoperability between FaceTime and the relay services,” or between FaceTime and Skype, Chambers said. “So if one relies on video calling, one has to have friends, family, other users of video services who use the exact same service you do. It’s never been like that in telecommunications in this country, or anywhere else,” he said. “We are a long ways today from interoperability amongst … users of video calling.” The FCC’s vision of “the neutral communications platform was an effort to drive interoperability across platforms,” Chambers said.