The Federal Communications Commission has just announced a December 17 workshop on VRS Reform, that could play a major role in determining the future of VRS. The reason why? Thanks to the recent VRS scandal, the FCC is taking a hard look at whether VRS will remain a competitive service, or change to competitive bidding whereas a contract or contracts would be awarded.
If they change to competitive bidding, what could that mean for us? Obviously it could mean a sharp reduction in the number of VRS service providers, because only the winners of competitive bidding would get the contract(s). What do you want or think should be done? Do you think that VRS should continue to be provided by numerous companies, or should there be a change to a contract system?
My personal opinion is that there should be a change to a contract system from having competitive service (multiple providers) because having fewer companies sharing the VRS pie should make it easier to monitor them. Thereby preventing this type of scandal from happening again. On the other hand, a change could mean several VRS companies going out of business, which would mean lost jobs for both hearing and deaf people.
Hat tip to Cheryl Heppner, Northern Virginia Resource Center for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Persons
Thank Jamie for make this Blog and thing around VRS industry need to be change… For better or worse?
I am pretty sure thing will work out in long run…
The relay companies are major sponsors of so many programs and events in the deaf community. Ultimately the VRS system has been a good way to extract a little bit of money from all the hearing people to help fund deaf services. If the system should change, we would need to be prepared. Deafweekly would probably go out of business since most of our sponsors are VRS companies.
This is like health insurance: using a one payer system like in Canada where one agency takes care of all medical bills, or a multi-payer system like we have where competing companies try for your business.
We have seen how multi-payer systems can hike up costs, duplicate services, confuse and cheat both the user and the provider. However, we have seen how a one payer system can cause inflexibility and poor availability of treatments.
Competition is good in buying products, but not so good in vital services due to the complicated system of charging and recordkeeping. The answer might be in tightening up the auditing systems and offering contracts to just two providers per state.
This does not bode well for choice or innovation. The largest VRS provider got a toehold early with very heavy government subsidization and that set the stage for the current conditions. Of course, the largest provider has no incentive to innovate or even care about we Deaf people. I want a Video Phone that I *own* and I do not want to subsidize a company whose policies and whose owners/executives I disagree with. This includes both their regulation of how we use the device and their personal outside activities. I want to support a company that is by, of, and for the Deaf. And that is not the one based in Salt Lake City! In addition, state-sanctioned monopolies are never good. Look at your phone company, your cable company, etc., and ask yourself whether they provide great customer service. No, we need freedom of choice!
The scandal is the result of lax government oversight during the Bush administration. The government knew about these problems for three years or more but did nothing! Proper oversight and actively enforced rules are the solution; NOT handing the entire thing over to the lowest bidder.
Having been an interpreter at the largest VRS companies, I can assure you, SIZE does not mean easier to monitor.
It actually works to the contrary – the larger they are the more difficult it is to uncover abuses.
One company I worked for Sorenson, has huge operations, call centers strewn all over the US and Canada. Sorenson was the first to uncover a great number of bogus calls. They took a proactive stand and continued to dig. As it turns out, they uncovered over $7MM in bogus billings. As a result they cut a check back to NECA. Along with this, they fired between 10 and 20 people (maybe more) who were acting independently, all over the US.
HOVRS (now Purple) is facing the music for similar problems. At one point in time ~75% of their call volume was generated by internal “marketers” calling conference bridges and talking about “work”. This gave way to “Button” calls, where the same Deaf employees would call businesses and seek to have the business identified as “Deaf Friendly” by putting the PurpleVRS link on their site. This gave way to another then another scheme to run minutes. It didn’t matter how loud we complained, management’s response was “just process the call.”
Now it has come out that Viable, CAC, CSD, Life Links, Snap.. etc etc etc.. all are doing their own thing to get minutes. The approach is different, but the result is the same.
This contributing problems are very similar those that contributed to the housing crash: greed mixed with lack of proper oversight. The incentives are powerful and clear for anyone who knows anything about the system; more minutes equal more money.
NECA and the FCC have been asleep at the wheel for almost a decade.
The FCC chairman was rebuked by congress for his failure to properly manage the enormous TRS fund.
What do you expect will happen?
The industry is sick and needs to be healed. However, anti-competitive measures would be a step backwards!
What needs to happen in VRS is the same that happened in the evolution of the telephone industry.
There needs to be a standardized platform – the Sorenson VP-200. This will become a public good.
Sorenson would be paid for the IP by the government. Then all features would be made available to all users through any provider. Then competition can happen the way it should – on quality of service, speed of answer and new developments that augment the value proposition for the consumer.
The standardized platform would allow active monitoring by members of management or NECA – something that was lacking at Sorenson, Purple, Viable, etc.
Once this happens, some competitors will exit the market – since they can’t make the margins they’re used to.
Others will enter, because they will be able to do it better – for less.
Meanwhile, the FCC will continue to trim the compensation rate to a level that is sustainable.
The market and demand will normalize.
Competition is KEY and must be allowed to continue. Only through competition and natural competitive forces will things improve.
So many VRS companies compete and that cause some frauds in some of them. Hope fewer competitors would be a lot better and safer and more reliable.
Sorenson is a good example for most of us!!!! We do not want to go back to Square One or even Square Two where we would use TDD instead of VP. Stop frauds, please. Thanks.
“The largest VRS provider got a toehold early with very heavy government subsidization and that set the stage for the current conditions.”
I thought the current conditions were that the deaf have a form of communications they wouldn’t otherwise have. Is that what you are referring to?
“I want to support a company that is by, of, and for the Deaf.”
Why? Are you saying the deaf are better at creating technology? Better at deployment? Better at company operations? The services are paid for by telephone taxes, so the deaf aren’t even the source of the funding, right?
Wasn’t the CEO at Viable deaf? Does that make his arrest suspicious in your eyes?
“And that is not the one based in Salt Lake City!”
Sorry, what is wrong with being based in Salt Lake City? You sound like you are arguing from biases that shouldn’t even be part of the discussion.
“The scandal is the result of lax government oversight during the Bush administration. ”
From what I’ve read, the arrests were made becuase people were behaving criminally. Blaming government oversight is like saying rapists aren’t to blame ’cause its governments job to stop them. “Joe Interpreter” described a company that did self-policing–which sounds like the sort of thing you would want to have happening.
As for contract vs. free market, I’ll have to defer to you folks who know more about this technology.
Interesting comments from Joe Interpreter, but I think different proposals are in order.
Sorenson has so much of the market that any competitive bidding could create a monopoly. In that case, the terps are the ones who will pay the price.
My suggestions:
1. VRS CA certification
Many run calls were possible because unqualified terps were hired to sit and watch blank screens or listen to podcasts. Give the terp something to lose for fraud – like their livelihood or freedom.
Give CAs and their supervisors the power to terminate suspicious calls without reprimand from the FCC or RID.
2. route all calls from a central switch
Most run calls can be prevented if all calls are routed to the next available terp and not to the default VRS provider. Fraud is more difficult when you don’t know which CA will field the call.
Some deaf callers will not get their favorite interpreter, but this is a free service provided by a fee on every phone and cell phone account in the U.S. If I call the Social Security Office, I don’t get to pick which clerk handles my problem.
Some large VRS providers are known to answer calls beyond 120 seconds, provide the interpreting, and not bill the FCC just to keep the competition from getting that business. Service should get faster if all calls were routed to the next available CA.
3. forget the VP-200
While cheap, locking advancing technology into a years old product is counter intuitive.
Sorenson manufactures or has the VP-200 manufactured somewhere on its behalf. No need to give them a monopoly on the box. Some other VRS providers have already complained about the VP-200 not passing ANI and using propietary code.
Better to put out a bid to Sony or Dell or someone to come up with a solution, or choices of devices. No one device will be the best for everyone. Just have standard codec requirements.
This is a huge issue. I anticipate some heated discussions at the workshop.
well, I think that if you have it competitive bidding, those who make the big bucks, aint going to be concerned about the deaf, or hard-of-hearing like people I know. I agree with Chaz on nu.2 route all calls to a central switch. it’s like at a place where I lived. If the person aint relayed to you, and just wants info, that person gets disconnected. plus if you have the same person all the time, you become buddies, and the results are sometimes not in your favor.
I want to say one thing about Viables and interpreting agency they destroy a lot of innocent people lives. I hope they serve time in jail. I am glad that I testify what I have seen working for Viables business associate. VRS is a great service for the deaf community. Sorrenson treat there interpreters like robot and I am determine that they will lose their market share because they don’t invest upgrading there vp quality. I am happy that i switch over z150 because the pix quality is outstanding and the vco is amazing. ZVRS even offer offer miss calls to your blackberry pager. Sometime it worth paying for it. I will work for ZVRS and increase there service. Watch out Sorrenson. We are going to get your business.
There are pros and cons to it. A pro is that with fewer options there’s less of a compatibility issue… that is, less chance that you and a friend used different services that aren’t compatible like for instance one friend using Sorenson VP-200 and another friend using a Purple MVP. This creates a conflict especially since Purple seems to be WAY behind with MVP distribution.
I wish the FCC required that videophone units be compatible with each other. If 2 hearing people own phones by 2 different companies they still have no problems calling each other… VPs should be the same. Accessibility isn’t equal without that.
A con is with fewer services available it’s likely that there will be longer delays in distribution of equipment since there will be more customers to service. There’s also the chance of shoddy service because companies have less competition and with less competition companies lose their edge.
I am deaf and I do pay the FCC charge for telecommunications access at 0.06 cents. I don’t mind paying for that because it’s worth it. It is not ‘only’ hearing people who get charged, it’s everyone who owns a phone (landline or wireless).
JoResaW04, the .06 you mentioned is not an FCC charge. That is typically that TRS surcharge states levy for the intrastate relay service. CBS displayed a phone bill in their video misleading the public to think that interstate relay is somehow a federally funded tax revenue based program.
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These are my reply comments to the CBS article and video, most are relevant to this discussion as well.
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It is important to understand that Video Relay is NOT government funded. It is not an appropriation and it is not funded by a tax. Each telephone company is required to make their services accessible to individuals with disabilities. This has been defined to be relay in the various forms (Traditional, VRS, STS, IP Relay, et. al). Each common carrier contributes 0.01137% of their telephone service revenue.
They do this because not all common carriers provide relay individually. There had to be a way to pay those that provided relay for those that did not, thus the interstate relay fund.
Let me state the contribution factor again in a different way; it is one thousand one hundred thirty seven hundred thousandths of one percent. You would not be able to see the penny if sliced to the proportion a private telephone company contributes.
Only a handful of telephone companies have opted to provide relay themselves. Other telephone companies have the same opportunity, instead they have chosen a group purchasing concept.
The fund collects a % contribution from all telephone companies; those carriers providing relay are paid based on minutes provided. They offer relay for themselves and every other telephone company. The goal being to recoup their own contribution & recover costs of providing relay for everyone else.
The FCC & the contractor responsible for adminstration of, NECA, serve as regulator of standards of relay service and as steward of the fund.
The 2009-2010 fund filing, submitted May 1, 2009, contains proposed provider payment formulas, fund size estimate and carrier contribution factor for the period July 2009 through June 2010. The filing proposes a fund size of $891.0 Million and a carrier contribution factor of 0.01137.
The fund pays for several forms of relay, not just video relay. Included is captioned telephone, speech to speech and voice carry over. These services are vital today and will become even more so in the near future. The veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan will experience greater numbers of hearing loss proportionally. Those citizens will not know Sign Language as they will be late-deafened. The veterans may also face a greater number of other types of disabilities which may effect speech as well. Someone who is late-deafened primarily uses captioned telephone and voice carry over.
The Video Relay service is in and of itself a vital tool in today’s workplace for Deaf and Hard of Hearing citizens. I personally know of one CPA who is Deaf. He has told me on more than one occasion that VRS was key to maintaining his career status because clients did not have to deal with antiquated text based services.
While it may seem that Deaf people are getting some “high tech service”, the callers on the other end who are hearing are also benefiting from the service. Today, unemployment benefits are verified via telephone touch-tone systems or voice recognition. These are for the most part not accessible via traditional text relay services. The necessity for more technological forms of relay is a function of the greater society that we all are a part of, nothing more.
The events leading up to today are unfortunate, but it should not be seen as a condemnation of Deaf and hard of hearing citizens or of the providers who work diligently everyday to ensure their customers have access to our nations telecommunication network.
There is much left to be done, that is true. I petitioned the FCC to establish the certification program. As founder and former President of the first common carrier certified by the FCC for reimbursement. I have seen the many financial, regulatory and corporate faces that are part of the industry; some good, some bad.
I believe the certification program brought positive technological and much needed regulatory changes. The main one being the adoption of Session Initiated Protocol which enables E911 emergency location and ten digit numbering for videophones.
The certification program simultaneously lowered the barrier of entry for some who would have the public believe they are advocates for ethical business practices, interoperability and service to the community.
I urge the FCC to continue its investigation and audit. Another form of fraud is misrepresentation of the underlying common carrier telephone service sold to the public, a key requirement for certification.
Should a company selling only a handful of telephone lines to the public reap multi-million dollar annual revenues from relay?
The positive benefits to our country and to the citizens impacted by video relay are immeasurable. We must remember that behind every minute of VRS, TRS, IP Relay, STS, CapTel, VCO, HCO, and the next new form of relay is a hard working American finding out about a promotion, a computer programmer at a non-profit leading a team of coworkers, a small business selling their product, a patient getting test results from their doctor and a mother talking to her son.
Daryl Crouse, CI, CT, founder and former President of Snap!VRS and former RID Video Interpreting Committee Chair. Presently interpreting and in law school part time.
“The largest VRS provider got a toehold early with very heavy government subsidization and that set the stage for the current conditions.”
I thought the current conditions were that the deaf have a form of communications they wouldn’t otherwise have. Is that what you are referring to?
NO, YOU MISS THE POINT. CONDITIONS ARE ONE COMPANY HAS NEAR MONOPOLY.
“I want to support a company that is by, of, and for the Deaf.”
Why? Are you saying the deaf are better at creating technology? Better at deployment? Better at company operations? The services are paid for by telephone taxes, so the deaf aren’t even the source of the funding, right?
Wasn’t the CEO at Viable deaf? Does that make his arrest suspicious in your eyes?
NO MATTER. YEH HAS HISTORY OF SHADY BIZ PRACTICES. POINT IS THESE BIG COMPANIES ARE IN IT FOR THE MONEY. NOT FOR THE DEAF.
“And that is not the one based in Salt Lake City!”
Sorry, what is wrong with being based in Salt Lake City? You sound like you are arguing from biases that shouldn’t even be part of the discussion.
NO, YOU SOUND PARANOID. I DETECT A PERSECUTION COMPLEX. YOU MUST BE ONE OF THEM! NO, YOU ARE WRONG AGAIN. POINT IS THAT SORENSON IS A MONOPOLY THAT GOT IN THE GAME WITH GOVERNMENT HELP. POINT IS THEY CARE NOTHING FOR DEAF. POINT IS THEY WERE NEVER AROUND IN THE DEAF WORLD UNTIL VRS (AND ALL THE MONEY) CAME ALONG. THEY ARE ABOUT MONEY, NOT PEOPLE.
“The scandal is the result of lax government oversight during the Bush administration. ”
From what I’ve read, the arrests were made becuase people were behaving criminally. Blaming government oversight is like saying rapists aren’t to blame ’cause its governments job to stop them. “Joe Interpreter” described a company that did self-policing–which sounds like the sort of thing you would want to have happening.
POINT IS, WHICH YOU AGAIN MISSED, IS THAT IF THE GOVERNMENT WAS DOING ITS JOB, THE FRAUD WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED SO EXTENSIVELY OR FOR SO LONG. YOUR ANALOGY DOES NOT APPLY. APPLES AND ORANGES