How much should the voucher be worth?

I believe I have come up with a very simple system for calculating what the value of a voucher should be.

Where:

X is the reasonable cost we should be asked to pay for a phone

Y is the cost of the cheapest Deaf Friendly Videophone on the market

and C is the cost of the voucher.

The formula would be Y-X=C

In other words it voucher we would receive would be equal the the cost of the cheapest deaf friendly phone on the market minus the reasonable cost of a phone.

Right of the bat this raises three obvious questions.

1) What is the reasonable cost that a deaf person should be asked to pay for a phone?

2) How do we establish what the cheapest VP on the market is?

3) What is the definition of a Deaf friendly phone?

Here are my answers to the questions

1) Q: What is the reasonable cost that a deaf person should be asked to pay for a phone?


A: The answer to this question is a simple one for me. What is the cheapest phone a hearing person can buy?
The cheapest phone that a hearing person can buy is 6 dollars. Walmart's cheap phone. So the simple answer is that we should only have to pay 6 dollars for a basic videophone. Personally I would not mind paying 20 dollars.


2)  Q: How do we establish what the cheapest VP on the market is?


A: This one is fairly simple as well. Basically a company that wants to have it's Videophone eligible for the voucher will submit it to FCC for approval and give FCC a price that they would be willing to sell the phone to the deaf for. Most prices I have heard for Videophone that are being sold to hearing are retailing for $500.00 or more. I am sure that if these same companies were forced to bid for the prices would be dramatically lower but we will use 500 dollars as a starting point..


3) Q:What is the definition of a Deaf friendly phone?

A: This is where it gets complicated. There are probably some really cheap videophones out there that don't do much more than connect to another videophone or another webcam. The problem is that these videophones don't have the same features for deaf that hearing phones do for the hearing. Hearing phones ring to acknowledge someone is trying to contact you but a videophone may not flash for the deaf. A hearing phone can use a normal 10 digit number but a videophone may require the use of an ip address. You get the idea. It is important that the FCC set up a list of standards that the videophone must meet in order for it to be eligible to be bought with a voucher. Here is a basic list of features that I would recommend that FCC adopt.

a) Phone must be able to make use of a  flashing system that will get our attention when someone is trying to contact us.

b) Phone must be able to utilize the 10 ten digit number system.

c) Phone must be interoperable with all other Deaf Friendly phones for point to point calls and must be interoperable with all VRS providers. This interoperability must use the 10 digit system and not ip addresses.




Readers.. Help me think of others. Remember this list is for what a basice telephone is supposed to do so don't suggest things like contact lists and call waiting as basic telephones that hearing use do not have these capabilities.