ICS Might Need to Provide TRS, FCC May 20 Drafts Show

Inmate calling service providers could be required to provide telecom relay services for deaf, hard of hearing and blind incarcerated people, ICS rates will be cut for interstate and international calls, and providers will have one less year to comply with caller ID authentication requirements if all draft items are approved during the FCC's May 20 meeting (see 2104280084).

A draft fifth Further NPRM seeks comments on whether the FCC can require ICS providers to provide access to telecom relay services and the extent to which TTY-based TRS is feasible in correctional facilities. The proposed rulemaking would also "expressly prohibit" ICS "providers from levying or collecting any charge on any party to a TRS call." The draft item wouldn't prohibit site commissions because "the absence of such data prevents us from more accurately determining the portion of site commissions directly related to the provision of inmate calling services."

Commissioners would vote an order that would affirm its 2020 order that the "jurisdictional nature of a telephone call for purposes of charging consumers depends on the physical location of the originating and terminating endpoints of the call." Interstate calls would be capped at 12 cents per minute for prisons, 14 cents for jails with more than 1,000 inmates. International calls would be capped at "the applicable total interstate rate cap, plus the amount paid by the calling services provider to its underlying wholesale carriers for completing international calls," the draft item said. The draft order would also adopt a mandatory data collection "to obtain more uniform cost data" and "determine reasonable permanent cost-based rate caps."

A draft Further NPRM proposes to cut from two years to one the amount of time some smaller carriers would have to comply with secure telephone identity revisited (Stir) and signature-based handling of asserted information using tokens (Shaken) rules. Larger carriers still face a June deadline. The draft asks how it would determine which smaller carriers would get a June 2022 deadline.

“We propose concluding that a subset of small voice service providers is ‘often ... responsible for illegal robocalls,’ is originating an increasingly disproportionate amount of such calls compared to larger voice service providers, and should therefore be subject to a shortened extension,” the FCC says. It cites a report that almost 95% of “high risk calls” originate from smaller providers. The draft asks how to determine which providers should be singled out, identifying “one or more definitional prongs that most accurately identify, in an administrable manner, those small voice service providers most likely to originate a significant quantity of unlawful robocalls.” One possible measure is when a provider “originates more than 500 calls per day for any single line in the normal course of business,” the draft said.

Also on the agenda is a draft NPRM that would continue a "tiered rate structure for the next VRS compensation plan." The draft order would extend current compensation rates through the end of the year or the effective date of rates adopted under the proposed rulemaking. FCC members would consider a draft order on reconsideration that would grant a petition to exclude Fort Mojave from the mixed-support condition as part of Lavaca's combining with Dobson Technologies, which has an indirect 32% interest in the company. The draft item reaffirms the commission's authority to apply the mixed-merger condition "where necessary."