FCC Proposes New Rules for Captioned Phone Calls

The Federal Communications Commission approved a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) for a new three-year plan for compensation rates for Internet Protocol Captioned Telephone Service (IP CTS). This service, supported through the Interstate Telephone Relay Service (TRS) Fund, allows individuals who are deaf and hard of hearing to read captions of phone conversations as they occur. The FCC is proposing that IP CTS providers be compensated using separate per-minute formulas, based on whether captioning for a telephone call is provided on a fully automatic basis or with the help of a communications assistant (CA). It costs less per minute to provide captions using only automatic speech recognition (ASR) than if a CA is involved. The NPRM approved seeks comment on the proposed compensation plan, along with other issues, including: identifying costs attributable to ASR-only captioning; adjusting certain recoverable-cost criteria; setting the duration of the compensation period; and making midperiod adjustments for inflation and productivity.