Ed’s Telecom Alert

All..

This is an old news according to a friend I video chatted with, but maybe the completion of the product is not so far in the future now?    

VRS industry now has four mobile VPs that I know of:  Purple’s MVP, two from CSDVRS’s Z-340 and PC-100, and Viable’s VPAD+.   This one is cell phone and it uses H.264 that uses an open source program.  

Of course, many of you probably already know that laptops with built-in web cameras can do VP and VRS as well.  

University Washington News

Video clip of a demo

Let me know what you think?  Would you purchase something like that?    Cell Phone/Pager with video conference capacity?  Should I put it to a vote?  

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

Folks..

I have been obsessed with reading Number Order and interpreting the order; obsession was still with me when I did the vlog on the NECA report so I made mistakes.  Here is the corrected vlog.  Sorry..

One part of the report is for month of December 2008.  VRS minutes were the highest at 8,087,897 and and the second one was 5,400,543 with IP Relay.   

You really cannot compare Interstate TTY relay service with VRS and IP Relay because Interstate TTY relay service does not include local and intrastate minutes (within the state). VRS and IP Relay do include local, intrastate, and long distance minutes. So keep that in mind. Interstate TTY relay service was at third with 784,479 minutes. 

Wow!  Interstate TTY relay service was the staple for deaf/hoh for many years, and  now has taken a nose dive compared from past (not compared to VRS and IP Relay) - TTY is on its way to join the antiques.    I remember Texas’s high was around 650,000 calls a month; when I last left TPUC, last August, it was like around 115,00 calls a month.  Big nose dive.

Keep in mind the minutes of Interstate TTY Relay service only means out of state minutes.   The local and intrastate TTY relay minutes are not in the report because states, not federal, are responsible for paying for these minutes. We do not know the total minutes of entire USA for TTY relay service. 

What I find interesting is the difference between two services as you can compare VRS with IP Relay as they are for entire USA.   The total cost for IP Relay was $6,947,798 and the total cost for VRS was whooping $51,232,601.  Even though the difference of minutes was little over 2 1/2 million minutes, and the difference in dollar is little over 44 million smackeroos. That’s just for one month.  

What was even more significant is that IP Relay and VRS use Internet and wireless network, not landline.  I wish the report would show the difference between wireless network and Internet in IP Relay minutes.  It would be interesting to see the difference between pager and computer use of IP Relay. 

Once portable VP becomes widely used, it would be interesting to know the difference between wireless network and Internet use for portable VP.  I hope the FCC will require NECA to do that report; it would give gov’t, VRS providers, and us deaf/hoh persons valuable insight.  (hint hint FCC folks

Anyway, no wonder the cost of VRS gets into media news more often these days.  

NECA Report Jan 2009

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

Folks,

CSD has a very good website and very easy to understand on the transition from analog to digitial TV.

Check it out

DTV

Most of us will not need to do anything, but if you do need to do something – CSD has telephone number you can call to get help if you have problem understanding website.  Can’t get better than that. 

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

Folks,

One thing that the FCC requires of VRS and Internet Relay providers is the ability of deaf/hoh users to be able to port their LN to a different provider.  Local Number is what you received from your original (default) provider.  

Porting simply means you can keep your LN when you change to a new default VRS provider.  There are several items that you all need to be aware of when porting LN to a new provider. 

If you decide that you want to change to a new VRS provider but keep your original LN, you do the following action. 

Contact the new VRS provider and tell them you want them to be your default provider and would like to port the LN.   The new VRS provider will take care of the request, and should be able to continue to use LN immediately; if not immediately, then very soon.

Many people ask this question: can you keep your original VP and be able to port to a different VRS provider? For example if you have an OJO (SnapVRS as default provider), and you want to port LN to, say, Viable as default provider and use OJO, Is this possible?

Right now the "best" answer in this particular case is no, and you would need to give up OJO, and accept VPAD from Viable, but you CAN port LN to Viable/VPAD and use same LN. 

Side note: according to the FCC rule, this porting LN to a different VRS provider and keep the original Video Phone is required by the regulation.  Unfortunately, right now this is not possible with most VRS providers.  

One issue that you all need to be aware of is that the subsequent clarification by the FCC seems to show that rule permits original VRS provider to STRIP all features except this two features: be able to call new VRS provider with the ten digit phone number; and when you type in LN to make a VRS call, VI should be able to automatically call the party of that LN you gave without you having to fingerspell the phone number you want to call. 

What about the stripped features?  Supposedly, new default VRS provider can add their new features to the original VP.  However, at this time to my understanding ALL VRS providers are not able to "add" new features to the VP that they do not distribute.  When will VRS providers be able to do that?  It won’t be right away – one or two years? Or maybe none? We’ll see how the VRS industry and the FCC work that out. 

So if you want to keep LN, a few possibilities seem to be these following items at this time: 

These require porting procedure:

1. You can port LN to new VRS provider and keep original VP and then lose the features of original VRS provider, and accept new features (see above remarks on that).
2. Or you port your original LN and give up your original VP and get a new VP from new VRS provider; that way you keep your original LN (this can be done now). 

These do not require porting procedure:

1. Stay with your original VRS provider; don’t go to another VRS provider. 
2. Or you can keep your original LN and original VP, and just add the other VRS providers to the address book (this can be done easily and most likely most people will do that).  
3. Or get multiple LN from each VP (VRS Providers) if you have several different VPs  (if you have several VPs, this is the most likely course of action that most of you will take.) (See my previous vlog on this.)

Hey, what about these VRS providers who do not distribute VP and you got LN?   I think it is gonna be a problem.  If I understand the relay rule right, you cannot get a LN with no VP.   

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed