The Solution

In this blog post I will submit what I think is the best solution to the VRS funding problem that I commented on my last post but first lets take a look at a few things that the FCC is doing. The way the funding works is that they pay a per minute rate. Every minute a deaf person uses VRS the VRS company will get paid a certain amount of money for that minute. The FCC is in the process at the moment of trying to figure out exactly what that rate should be. There are a lot of different VRS companies that are different sizes and have different goals so there is really no true consensus on what the rate should be. I'll let the VRS companies and FCC fight out what the actual rate should be as I am no businessman and several VRS companies insist on keeping their books private so it wouldn't matter if had any knowledge on the finances of business. However, there is one thing that I would like to focus on for this blog, the FCC does not want to pay for the costs of providing, installing, and maintaining Videophones.

In other words FCC only wants to pay  for the VRS service itself and nothing else. There is no question that the VRS rates would be far lower than they are now if NECA wasn't paying for all of the free (or drastically reduced in price) Videophones.

Its my opinion that NECA should be used to fund the use of videophones but its not my opinion that they should do it with the per minute rate that they are doing now. FCC could tell the states to start providing the equipment but I disagree with this because where you have 50 different states you will have 50 different solutions to one problem. One state may provide it through a voucher system and another might just distribute the cheapest phone on the market. There may even be states that flat out refuse to provide videophones. I feel we need to have a videophone distribution on a federal level so that the videophones that we are getting are fair and consistent nationwide.

So I propose that FCC create a second fund for VRS equipment that is separate from VRS services. This fund should be used to provide vouchers to Deaf people to buy a Videophone of theirr choice. This voucher that I am proposing will not be completely free. We should pay about what a hearing person pays for a basic voice phone. Here are some of the positives of having a voucher system that is separate from the VRS services fund.

1) This gives deaf people a choice of what Videophone to use. It puts the power in our hands (note: when I say "our" I mean Deaf and Hard of Hearing since I am one) We are not stuck with whatever phone the providers want us to use or whatever phone is being distributed by the VR office. This choice will also allow us to have a say on the quality of the Videophones. When things are free we really don't have any room to complain.

2) This will cut down on the amount of money spent by the fund for Videophones. Right now under the per minute system NECA is basically paying for several videophones per person. With this proposal NECA would only be funding one Videophone.

3) This would allow a company that has no interest in providing VRS services to enter the market for Videophones. Right now the only companies providing Videophones are the ones providing VRS services. This is a huge limiting factor.

4)This will prevent VRS providers that have no intention of providing equipment from benefiting from the a system that provides funding for VRS equipment and it will not punish those that do provide equipment.


How much should a voucher be worth? I will address that in the next blog.