In Re )

)

CONSUMER DISABILITY )

TELECOMMUNICATIONS )

ADVISORY COMMITTEE )

)

Meeting )

Pages: 1 through 239

Place: Washington, D.C.

Date: June 28, 2002

Before the

FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20554

In Re )

)

CONSUMER DISABILITY )

TELECOMMUNICATIONS )

ADVISORY COMMITTEE )

)

Meeting )

Room TW-C305

445 12th Street, S.W.

Washington, D.C.

Friday,

June 28, 2002

The parties met, pursuant to the notice of the

Commission, at 9:10 a.m.

ATTENDEES:

[Companies]{.underline}:

[AARP]{.underline}

JEFFREY KRAMER

Legislative Representative for Telecommunications

and Utilities

Federal Affairs Department

[Alliance for Public Technology]{.underline}

PAUL SCHROEDER

President

[American Council of the Blind]{.underline}

DAVID POEHLMAN

Technology Consultant

[AT&T]{.underline}

MICHAEL F. DelCASINO

Regulatory Division Manager

[Call for Action]{.underline}

SHIRLEY ROOKER

President

ATTENDEES (Continued):

[Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA)]{.underline}

ANDREA WILLIAMS

Assistant General Counsel

RON BARNES

[Cingular Wireless LLC]{.underline}

SUSAN PALMER

Manager of Industry Affairs

[Communication Service for the Deaf]{.underline}

ROGER KRAFT

Vice President, Business Technology Unit

[ConnectBid LLC]{.underline}

JOSEPH C. GASKINS

[Consumer Action]{.underline}

KEN McELDOWNEY

Executive Director

[Consumer Action Network]{.underline}

CLAUDE STOUT

[GALLAUDET UNIVERSITY]{.underline}

JUDITH E. HARKINS, Ph.D.

Professor

[Gila River Telecommunications, Inc.]{.underline}

BELINDA NELSON

General Manager

[Hewlett-Packard Company]{.underline}

MICHAEL TAKEMURA (alternate for)

LEE BATEMAN

Product Program Manager

[IDEAL at NCR]{.underline}

STEVE JACOBS

President

[Inclusive Technologies]{.underline}

JIM TOBIAS

President

ATTENDEES (Continued)

[Information Technology Technical Assistance & Training
Center]{.underline}

JULIE CARROLL

Director of Industry & Government Relations

[Microsoft]{.underline}

LAURA RUBY

Program Manager

[Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation]{.underline}

RAYNA AYLWARD

Executive Director

[National Association of Broadcasters]{.underline}

KAREN FULLUM KIRSCH

Vice President

Regulatory Affairs

[National Association of State Relay Administration]{.underline}

GIL BECKER

Vice Chair

[National Cable Telecommunications Association]{.underline}

JIM EWALT (alternate for)

DANIEL BRENNER

Senior Vice President for Law and Regulatory

Policy

[Nokia]{.underline}

MICAELA TUCKER

Team Leader

Accessibility Project

KATHLEEN F. O\'REILLY

Attorney at Law

REBECCA LADEW (alternate for)

BOB SEGALMAN, Ph.D.

Speech to Speech, Founder

[Self Help for Hard of Hearing People]{.underline}

JOSEPH GORDON (alternate for)

BRENDA BATTAT

Director of State Development

ATTENDEES (Continued):

[Smithsonian Center for Latino Initiatives]{.underline}

DR. REFUGIO ROCHIN

Director

[Sony Ericsson, Inc.]{.underline}

MATT KALTENBACH

Product Manager

[Sprint Corporation]{.underline}

TRAVIS SOWDERS (alternate for)

PAUL W. LUDWICK

TRS Product Manager

[Telecommunication Industry Association]{.underline}

ROBERT CHROSTOWSKI

Senior Vice President

[Telecommunication Research & Action Center (TRAC)]{.underline}

KATE DEAN

Research Assistant

[TRIPOD Captioned Films]{.underline}

NANCI LINKE-ELLIS

Executive Director

[Verizon Communications]{.underline}

RICHARD T. ELLIS

Director of Federal Affairs

[WGBH National Center for Accessible Media]{.underline}

LARRY GOLDBERG

Director

[P R O C E E D I N G S]{.underline}

(9:10 a.m.)

MS. ROOKER: I have some difficulty in counting. I\'m running out of
fingers. So if you could please sit down so that I can start all over
again.

(Pause)

MS. ROOKER: Can anybody figure out what is two-thirds of 40? Somebody
fast here.

MALE SPEAKER: Oh, is this a quorum thing?

MS. ROOKER: Twenty-six? Let\'s see if we have it.

(Asides)

MS. ROOKER: If we can get everybody seated at the table. Would you
please help?

(Pause)

MS. ROOKER: Well, by my count, we do have a quorum, so we can proceed
with business. Thank you very much. I\'d like to welcome you to this
muggy Washington day. And we may put on some real fireworks for you this
afternoon if there is a thunderstorm, and it\'s not even the 4th of July
yet.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mike DelCasino, committee
member, and AT&T for providing us our continental breakfast and lunch
today. I\'d like to welcome all of you. There are several alternates who
are here in lieu of regular members. And what I\'d like to do is for us
to go around the room and introduce ourselves. And if you are an
alternate, just introduce yourself and tell us who the person is that
you are filling in for.

So I\'ll start out by saying that I\'m Shirley Rooker, and I\'m the
president of Call for Action.

MR. TOBIAS: Jim Tobias, Inclusive Technologies and the IVR Accessibility
Forum.

MS. PALMER: Susan Palmer, Cingular Wireless.

MR. BECKER: Gil Becker with the National Association for State Relay
Administration and the Marilyn Relay.

MS. AYLWARD: Rayna Aylward, executive director of the Mitsubishi
Electric America Foundation.

MS. HARKINS: Judy Harkins, Gallaudet University.

MS. DEAN: Kate Dean from TRAC.

MR. KRAMER: Jeff Kramer, AARP.

MR. ELLIS: Rich Ellis from Verizon.

MS. TUCKER: Micaela Tucker, Nokia.

MR. DelCASINO: Mike DelCasino, AT&T.

MR. GASKINS: Joe Gaskins, ConnectBid.

MS. O\'REILLY: I\'m Kathleen O\'Reilly. I don\'t represent any specific
group, but I\'m an attorney that represents various consumer groups in
telecommunications proceedings at the Commission, and I\'m the
residential repair representative on the network reliability steering
committee.

MR. SOWDERS: I\'m Travis Sowders with Sprint, and I\'m an alternate for
Paul Ludwick.

MS. LADEW: I\'m Rebecca Ladew. I\'m an alternate for Bob Segalman. Bob
has a few words for me to say for him. Bob has asked me to follow up on
his comment at the last meeting that while 500 Americans now use Speech
to Speech, 500,000 people could be able to use it if they knew about it
and had an hour of training. While the FCC mandates the provision of
Speech to Speech, the FCC cannot require that consumers be identified
and trained. Bob is looking for large corporations willing to encourage
the advertising agencies that they contract with to assist pro bono with
the development and distribution of a Speech to Speech public service
announcement.

If you have any ideas or suggestions, please contact Bob at
Bob@dor.ca.gov. Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Rebecca. It\'s good to have you with us. We\'re
proceeding around the table.

MS. KIRSCH: Good morning, everyone. I\'m Karen Kirsch. I\'m from the
National Association of Broadcasters.

MR. KALTENBACH: Matt Kaltenbach, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications.

MS. BURSTEIN: Diane Burstein with the National Cable and
Telecommunications Association. I\'m substituting for Dan Brenner.

MR. CRAFT: Roger Craft with CSD, also known as Communication Service for
the Deaf, in Great Falls, South Dakota.

MR. GORDON: I\'m Joe Gordon, League for Hard of Hearing, an alternate
for Brenda Battat from Self Help for Hard of Hearing.

MS. WILLIAMS: I\'m Andrea Williams. I\'m with the Cellular
Telecommunications and Internet Association.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: Bob Chrostowski of Watts America (phonetic)
representing the Telecommunication Industry Association, TIA.

MR. GOLDBERG: Larry Goldberg, WBGH National Center for Accessible Media.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: Nanci Linke-Ellis, TRIPOD Captioned Films.

MR. TAKEMURA: Michael Takemura, Hewlitt-Packard, for Lee Bateman.

MR. POEHLMAN: David Poehlman, American Council of the Blind.

MR. JACOBS: Steve Jacobs, NCR Corporation.

MR. MARSHALL: I\'m Scott Marshall with the FCC. I support this
committee.

MS. ROOKER: And we have a couple of people over here on the left who
haven\'t introduced themselves.

DR. ROCHIN: I\'m Refugio Rochin from the Smithsonian Institution. It
gives me an opportunity to invite you to see a beautiful exhibition in
the Arts and Industries Building just down the street here. It\'s called
\"History through Deaf Eyes,\" produced by Gallaudet University. Please
see it. The history shows the development of sign language as well as
TTY and other historic developments, as well as the beautiful lives and
stories of leaders prominent in Gallaudet University history.

MS. ROOKER: How long is it going to be there?

DR. ROCHIN: I\'m not sure exactly. Probably a month.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Thank you.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Ken McEldowney, Consumer Action.

MS. ROOKER: Have we got everyone else? Okay. Now that we\'re certain
that you know who you are, I would like to ask you when you make a
comment to please give your name before you make the comment so that
when we do the recording, we\'ll be able to identify people who are
making comments or whatever. Thank you.

I would like to tell you that we are ‑- this is being streamed on the
Internet. So behave yourselves. You can wave to Mom discreetly. And as I
said, please give your name when you\'re speaking.

We would like to ask for any suggestions on additions to the agenda,
keeping in mind that of course we are time sensitive today, very much
so. But at any rate, one of the things that we\'re starting to do is ask
for comments on the agenda at the beginning of the meeting. And if there
is anything that is urgent or needs to be covered, we\'ll try to find
the time to do it if it\'s appropriate.

So at this moment, does anyone have any comments or suggestions on the
agenda?

MS. ROOKER: All right. Then moving forward, I\'d like to go to the
approval of the November minutes of the November meeting. I\'d like to
tell you that we don\'t have the March minutes, and I will personally
take the blame for that. At our March meeting, we accomplished a great
deal, but unfortunately the discussion and the recommendations at the
end of the day became somewhat unstructured. In other words, I goofed
and didn\'t ask that each recommendation be in the form of a motion.

So having been hit over the head with a gavel, I have come to attention,
and I\'m reforming, so that I\'m asking you when you\'re presenting your
recommendation, as I said, identify yourself, make it in the form of a
motion if that\'s your intent so that it can be voted on. So then we
won\'t have the problems that we\'re having sorting out the last March
meeting. This will make the process much clearer and easier to follow
when we\'re doing the transcripts.

So at any rate, going to the November meeting, the March minutes will be
available within a week or two. But I just wanted you to know why they
were not here right now.

At any rate, is there a motion or discussion of the November minutes?
Yes, Kathleen?

MS. O\'REILLY: I just have a minor item. I see from the minutes that
they report that our colleague Ken McEldowney had volunteered to be on
our structure and operation committee. And if so, as a member of that
committee, I feel we missed that. He\'s not listed on the committee and
didn\'t participate. So if he subsequently withdrew, I think it might be
useful to note that in the minutes for clarity purpose, and if not, to
long overdue add him as a member with certainly my apologies for not
having caught that as part of the meeting.

MS. ROOKER: Ken?

MR. McELDOWNEY: Ken McEldowney. I just thought I wasn\'t loved.

MS. ROOKER: We love you, Ken. Any other comments? So noted, Kathleen.
Thank you. Yes, Rayna.

MS. AYLWARD: Actually, these two comments sort of undergird what I was
going to suggest or perhaps even put it forward as a resolution. If we
could have the minutes of the meeting circulated within a month of the
meeting, it might circumvent some of these little gaps in terms of
follow-up actions.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Thank you. Yes. And as I said, the March meeting was
‑- it was very difficult to get it done. So I apologize for that. Any
other comments on the November minutes? All right. Do I hear a motion to
approve them? All right. David motioned ‑- made the motion to approve.
Second?

MS. AYLWARD: Second.

MS. ROOKER: Seconded. All in favor say \"aye.\"

(Chorus of ayes)

MS. ROOKER: Opposed? The motion carries. Thank you.

Now just to give you some ideas of the things that we\'re doing today,
there has been a great deal of work done by our working groups, as well
as the disability subcomittee, and you\'re going to be listening to them
as we move through the day. In the late afternoon, we\'ll have a
discussion of telephone scams, so get ready with your most hated scams.
I brought some of mine. And I think at this moment I\'m going to let
Scott give you a little bit of information on the logistics for today\'s
meeting.

MR. MARSHALL: Thank you, Shirley. Good morning, everyone. Just a few
logistical details. The restrooms are to my right on the left end of
this rectangle configuration, right out the door to my right, straight
down the hall and to the left. Also, right out that same door, to your
immediate left, are telephones. We are going to be having lunch for
committee members at 12:45. And as Shirley noted, courtesy of AT&T.
Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: I would like to recognize a couple of people who are joining
us today for the first time. Doc Merlson (phonetic) has been recently
appointed the deputy bureau chief of the consumer and governmental
affairs bureau. He actually oversees the consumer affairs and outreach
division. Doc, welcome to joining our meeting today. And also Amy Brown,
who is a new legal advisor to the committee and is working with Scott.
Amy? Where is she? Amy is behind me. Thank you, Amy. It was nice to meet
you, and welcome to our meeting.

And I see that we are very honored to have with us Dane Snowden, who
really doesn\'t need any introduction. But let me just make one word of
comment, and that is to say that the FCC has recently published an
excellent consumer guide on mobile phone service, and also, they have
launched the Get Connected program, which is about the lifeline and the
linkup subsidy programs. And I\'m pleased that those things are going
well.

Dane, you\'re going to give us some few words. Thank you. Dane Snowden.

(Applause)

MR. SNOWDEN: Good morning. I\'m going to be very, very brief because
when I looked at your agenda, I saw how many things you all want to
accomplish today. So I figure you don\'t need to hear from me too long.

I wanted to thank you again for joining us today. I know you spend a lot
of ‑- many of you spend your own money to get here. You take a lot of
your own personal time, and a lot of work has gone on in the past
several months in the subcommittees and the ad hoc committees, coming
together to give us advice. And I just want to say thank you very much
for all of that.

I also want to echo everyone by saying thank you to AT&T for providing
sustenance for everyone this morning and this afternoon. We appreciate
that. Particularly since it doesn\'t come out of my budget, I really
appreciate that.

When I got the briefing on what was going on in this committee, I
understand that the ad hoc committees have done ‑- and the subcommittees
have done a lot of work to bring information and recommendations to us.
And this is exactly why this committee was created a year and a half
ago. So we\'re on the right track. And I look forward ‑- I understand it
has been voted that of course we want to have a new C/DTAC in the coming
year, our recommendation going to the chairman. I look forward to
getting that recommendation formally and all the information so I can
submit it to him.

We look forward to working with you. Have a great meeting, save travels
back. Have a wonderful 4th of July. And thanks a lot. I will definitely
see you during the breaks, but I don\'t want to take too much of your
time. Enjoy yourselves, and thank you for all of the work that you do
for us. We appreciate it.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you very much, Dane.

(Applause)

MS. ROOKER: Dane Snowden. He is the bureau chief of the consumer and
governmental affairs bureau, which is a new name for it. Well, recently
renamed. Thank you very much, Dane.

Moving right along, we\'re going to go into the reports of the operating
working group. We\'re going to proceed this way. Rich Ellis chaired that
group. He can introduce his ad hoc committee members. And also, he will
be giving you an oversight of some of the recommendations, and then
there will be a period of question and answer, and we\'ll figure out
whether or not we come up with some recommendations. Thank you, Rich.

MR. ELLIS: Thank you. This is Rich Ellis. First of all, I want to
apologize on behalf of myself and my committee for what we\'re about to
do to the captioners and interpreters. I think between myself and
Kathleen at least, the two of us have the land speed talking record. I
know I\'ll try and slow down.

MS. O\'REILLY: I\'m studying sign language, so I\'ve become very
sensitive to their challenge.

MR. ELLIS: I\'ve actually seen interpreters\' hands burst into flames
when they have been trying to interpret what I say.

(Laughter)

MR. ELLIS: So I\'ll try and talk slowly. It probably would make sense
for us to go around the table and just for the folks who are on the
committee to introduce themselves. I know Kathleen around this way. And
who else is over ‑- Dave in the other corner. Claude is a member ex
officio. He hasn\'t gotten to a meeting yet. But we value his input and
we look forward to his participation in the future. And Susan Palmer
over there in the corner, Jeff Kramer over here to next to me. I think
that\'s the whole group. We met by telephone, so it\'s kind of hard to
remember who was involved.

We had a fairly daunting task ahead of us. As you know, we have been in
operation for almost two years now and have done a lot of interesting
things. But many of us felt that we could probably do a better job with
some changes to our charter and our protocol.

As you know, the charter is basically our reason for being. The protocol
is the way we get things done. And so the things we\'ll talk about today
impact both of those areas. At some point, I think it would be valuable
for us to get more definition from the Commission in terms of
reorganization and how that\'s going to impact the committee. I don\'t
know, Dane, if you want to talk about basically what happened in the
Commission now, if you can get like an organization chart or something
sent out later on. Would that be easy for you? Okay. So we look forward
to having that.

As you know, as we\'re basically structured now, we pretty much report
in under Dane\'s organization. We would like to encourage Dane to reach
out to the other bureaus and make sure they understand that we
appreciate working with them as well and hope that they feel part of
this committee and welcome to address us.

We did send out a report of our initial conversations. And I thought
what it might be useful to do is to take the issues one at a time. I\'ll
kind of give you a sense of what we talked about in our phone
conversations. I have no doubt that my fellow committee members will
jump in whenever they feel like it. They were willing to do that on the
call. I hope they\'ll do it again today.

We want to go over those, and then we\'ll talk about them one at a time
and have discussions one at a time, and then perhaps we\'ll do motions
about each of those subject topics. Does that make sense, Shirley? Is
that the best way to do it, you think, Scott? And Scott also had
discussed our recommendations with the general counsel\'s office and had
some input on some of them. So, Scott, please feel free to weigh in as
well as we get to those areas.

The first topic we talked about was quorum requirements. And we talked
about what we view as the law of diminishing returns, which is every
time we have a break, less people come back than were here before. So as
the day goes on, the numbers get smaller and smaller. And there were
concerns that under the current quorum restrictions or quorum
requirements, as the day goes on, we might not be able to do business
because we wouldn\'t have a quorum.

I know Kathleen had done a lot of research into the quorum rules. Do you
want to discuss that at all, Kathleen, and sort of state where we are?

MS. O\'REILLY: I think you include it.

MR. ELLIS: Okay.

MS. O\'REILLY: I\'ll be glad to expand, but I think that unless there
are questions, the essence of it is in the report.

MR. ELLIS: Basically, usually a quorum is considered a majority. But
under our protocols, it is two-thirds. So it\'s a pretty high standard
to meet, and the problem is that as people leave, we kind of risk losing
that quorum. And it could reach a situation where we could stop having a
mandate to do business because there weren\'t enough people in the room.

We thought that was too high. We thought that a more reasonable quorum
would be a majority of the committee. We also would encourage all of our
fellow committee members to please stay for the meetings and stay for
the entire meeting. We meet only several times a year. We know the dates
well in advance. Please do everything you can to stay for the entire
meeting.

We also need to be sensitive to the fact that some of our members pay
their own way here and are here for specific issues. And if our
attendance numbers drop to the point where we can\'t discuss those
issues, they\'re really out of money and time, and it\'s just very
inconsiderate.

Anybody want to talk about that section of the quorum piece? Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. I also sort of support the idea of having a
majority. I think that one of the things that on a number of groups that
I\'m part of is that once you have a quorum, you can continue to do
business even if people then subsequently leave. I think that ends up
being fairer for the people who have committed themselves for the full
day, as well as I think it would then provide an incentive for people to
continue to be at the meeting because they would then know if they left
the votes could still be taken.

So I think that would be sort of the only thing that I would add to
that.

MR. ELLIS: Andrea?

MS. WILLIAMS: Rich, I don\'t know if you got my e-mail. Unfortunately,
we have been having problems with our e-mail system, and I have not been
able to get access. I can get information from the list serve, but I
can\'t send anything back.

But CTI really supports this recommendation in terms of the quorum
requirement. The suggestion I have is that if the FCC and the committee
chair could prepare a schedule of the C/DTAC meetings a year in advance
and distribute to the committee members at the beginning of the year,
the members and their alternates then could plan well in advance and
make appropriate arrangements.

MR. ELLIS: Any other comments? Scott?

MS. ROOKER: I think we did have the days. I think that\'s an excellent
suggestion. That\'s what we tried to do. I believe this year we did have
the dates at the beginning of the year, and we certainly will strive to
do that for future meetings.

MR. ELLIS: Are there any other comments about Ken\'s proposal, about
once a quorum always a quorum.

MS. ROOKER: You know, I don\'t know enough about Robert\'s Rules to know
if that in fact is correct, if you have a quorum of the beginning of a
meeting and your quorum ‑- then you no longer have a quorum. I\'m not
sure that you can actually authentically take a vote.

MS. O\'REILLY: Madame Chair?

MR. ELLIS: Kathleen?

MS. O\'REILLY: I\'d like to address that. In the absence of a challenge
to a quorum, you do continue to conduct ordinary business. And a
governing body is at liberty in its equivalent of by-laws ‑- in this
instance, I assume it would be our protocols ‑- to identify with
specificity any exceptions to that the issues deemed of such a serious
nature, such as whether it should be disbanded, whether or not the
composition should be realigned, that might under certain circumstances
require a quorum at the time of the vote. But that is sort of an
operating structure for administrative efficiency.

MS. ROOKER: So under most circumstances then you could continue even
though the quorum no longer exists.

MS. O\'REILLY: For the conducting of ordinary business and for
discussion of agenda items that were noticed. That is why providing an
advance notice of issues is very fair ‑- I mean is very important to
both the spirit and the substance of that sort of collegiality because
having been notified in advance that a particular agenda item is there,
it then becomes all the more incumbent upon members to be prepared to
discuss and vote on it. Or, at the outset of the meeting, to request
that that particular item ‑- an ad hoc motion that that is of such an
important nature on the agenda that that should be rearranged so it is
on the front end of the meeting so that there is clearly a quorum, or to
say a resolution that when that issue is discussed, no vote will be
taken unless there is quorum.

It gives you that flexibility to adjust to the specific items. But the
standard steps unintended and undesirable consequences is to use the
advance agenda as one tool to at the front end give the entire body an
opportunity to discuss and vote on changing the agenda, both
substantively and to its order, and then to understand that in the
absence of a challenge to a quorum, it is not a bar to continuing unless
there is a specific exception either in a resolution or in the
equivalent to the protocols.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you. And as you noticed, we did put in the
recommendation from the committee about the agenda. We appreciate that.
Thank you very much.

DR. ROCHIN: Just a question. Wouldn\'t we want to have at least a
minimum that can vote at the end of ‑- let\'s say we lose the quorum,
but at least have a minimum number that would be required to decide on a
vote.

MR. ELLIS: David.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. I answer that, but that wasn\'t my original reason for grabbing
the microphone. It\'s very important that that substantive process be
done in a balanced way in this particular setting. So I don\'t know that
a minimum of people available to vote would necessarily approach that.
But I do like the idea of having the checks in place that we have put in
and that were just discussed briefly a few moments ago.

My issue concerns perhaps we could find out from people who know in
advance how much of the meeting they plan to attend. I mean, the reality
of life is that there are situations where there are conflicts. Some of
those conflicts come up after the best of plans have been laid. So when
you come to a meeting and you know that you\'re not going to be able to
make the full day, maybe we can have a provision in our morning
registration process for people to notify. And perhaps, if it\'s not too
indiscrete, we can even ask people in their introductions will you be
staying for the full day, answer yes or no, so that as you go around and
introduce yourself, I\'ll be here to noon, I\'ll be here till 10:00, but
then I\'ll be coming back at 2:00, you know, something like that.

This gives us some idea of maybe how to structure the flow, maybe how to
change the flow in some instances if we have to to accommodate the best
possible match between what we\'re doing and having the people to do it
with. Thank you very much.

MR. ELLIS: Nanci.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: Again, Nanci Linke-Ellis. It goes back to the issue of
when we joined the committee we made the commitment to two to four days
a year. I think if there is a point where there is a conflict, you do
have the right to have an alternate. You do have the right to
teleconference. The FCC has gone ‑- bent over backwards to make sure
that people could participate. And I think the frustration that we felt
at the end of the last March meeting, where there are a couple of issues
that we really wanted to vote on, but several of us really were hesitant
to do that because there were so few of us left, and we felt that it
would not be representative for us to do that.

So I\'m not quite sure how many people comprised a committee and what a
quorum is. But I assume we have a quorum here today. And I just think
people have to be ‑- if they do have a conflict, they should be able to
send an alternate.

MR. ELLIS: Any other discussion on the quorum issue? All right. Let me
see if I can summarize the discussion and I guess make a motion, and
we\'ll do it that way. We would move that all members be encouraged to
remain for the entire meeting. We move that a simple majority comprise a
quorum. And we move that business will continue on routine issues and
agenda items once a quorum has been established unless challenged by a
member of the committee. Anything else we need to add?

MS. O\'REILLY: I think informally to embrace the last suggestion is an
efficient way to help the body make decisions as they move through the
agenda. And it might be appropriate with respect to your first item to
include ‑- unless -‑ I\'d almost have to see anyway ‑- but something
that suggests that an exception to an otherwise simple majority would
have to be reflected in a resolution passed by more than a majority of
the body. I think we need to give ourselves the opportunity in the
future that there may be issues of such supreme importance that we would
want more than simply a simple majority to vote on it.

And so rather than straightjacket us now in identifying what those
topics might be, to simply have the resolution give us the flexibility
in the future to create an exception to that through a resolution that
would have to be passed by more than a simple majority of the body. And
of the body, not of those present is my suggestion because if you barely
had the majority present for that discussion, it could be tilted.

MR. ELLIS: Yeah. Rebecca.

MS. LADEW: I have a suggestion. If the committee member knew what the
issues were before the meeting there could be a quorum vote. If a
specific member could not be here for the whole time, then that member
could vote before if they were to leave.

MR. ELLIS: There was discussion about proxy voting. I believe that the
general counsel\'s office weighed in on that one. And my understanding
was they said that would not be allowable. Is that correct?

MR. MARSHALL: Proxy voting can be problematic because the committee has
to decide ‑- has to demonstrate that there has been a deliberation in
making its recommendations, and that one could argue that if proxy
voting is taken the extreme, it wasn\'t a deliberative action of the
body. So it is problematic, as I understand it.

MR. ELLIS: Rayna.

MS. AYLWARD: This proxy voting, does that also include an action in the
form of a resolution to be circulated among the members of the committee
that would be done in the form of either, say, e-mail or some other form
of written resolution? The reason I was going to bring that up is that
if we\'re talking about an issue that\'s of really compelling importance
that might make a significant change in the way we operate or in what
we\'re going to recommend, sometimes the best decision is not the one
that\'s made in the heat of the discussion at hand. And it may be better
to take a little time before making a decision on that issue.

And if it were a case that at the same time not all members were present
during that discussion, perhaps a summary of the discussion points could
be made, and a subsequent ‑- and a resolution proposed, and a subsequent
vote, if you will, take place among the membership, again by ‑- I don\'t
know what you\'d call it. It would not be ‑- it\'s not absentia. It\'s
not by proxy. But it\'s electronic voting. We do it on several boards
that I\'m on all the time.

MR. MARSHALL: Could I comment on that, Rich?

MR. ELLIS: Please.

MR. MARSHALL: Rayna, I appreciate the spirit in which your suggestion is
made. Unfortunately, we have some constraints because this is a federal
advisory committee, and there is a requirement that our agenda be
noticed in the Federal Register and that we actually have a meeting to
take action to make recommendations.

We really cannot meet electronically as a committee and meet the
openness requirements of the FACA statute that requires that the meeting
be public, as well as the matter of being sure that there is a
deliberation made on the recommendation.

So I think what you\'re suggesting in terms of an e-mail vote or that
sort of thing would be really a problem, unfortunately.

MR. ELLIS: Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Ken McEldowney, Consumer Action. Yeah. I think I would
like to go sort of back to the quorum motion Rich suggested. I think I
would certainly oppose proxies. In essence, in some cases, it could be
two steps removed because I think a number of the groups here have
alternates that attend. And so there would be the question is it the
original member who is proxying, or is the alternate, or whatever.

So I would think that my suggestion would be to move ahead with the
suggestions that have been made in terms of revising the quorum, but not
to have either electronic votes or proxies.

MR. ELLIS: Any other discussion? I\'m betting you\'re going to want me
to restate the motion, aren\'t you? I\'ll see if I can restate it and
incorporate Kathleen\'s comments as well. And please weigh in.

So this resolution would be, first of all, to encourage all members to
participate for the entire meeting. We would say a simple majority would
be our quorum. However, if a committee deems an item sufficiently vital
as to warrant more input, the committee can vote to require a
two-thirds.

MS. O\'REILLY: If a majority of the committee.

MR. ELLIS: A majority of the committee.

MS. O\'REILLY: Strike that word majority. I\'m sort of trying to edit it
as I hear it.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Let\'s go back. If the majority of the committee deems
an item so vital as to warrant more committee consideration, the
majority of the committee may ‑‑

MS. O\'REILLY: No. More than a simple majority for the purposes of a
quorum.

MR. ELLIS: You know what? Let\'s do this. Why don\'t we sit down ‑-

MS. O\'REILLY: During the break \--

(Simultaneous discussion)

MR. ELLIS: ‑- come back and do it on that one because we do want to be
out by 5 o\'clock today, I\'m sure.

Moving on to the agenda, a couple of quick points that came up. Again,
there was the question of getting the agendas out a little earlier. The
results of the suggestion that the agenda include time limits for
discussion on agenda items, that came in from Shelly by e-mail. It was
also thought that we should review the agenda as the first item of
business so that we could rearrange the schedule if necessary to
accommodate people who had to leave. We could decide whether an item
warranted the amount of time that was given, et cetera. And we would
discourage last-minute items to the agenda, perhaps putting in, as
Andrea suggested, a 48-hour cutoff period before the meeting for
addition of new items.

Any discussion on the agenda type issues?

MS. O\'REILLY: Well, the only comment I have on the 48-hour cutoff is
that given our lack of power over announcements made at the Commission,
a situation may arise in which there is a notice of proceeding opening
that may arise in that 48-hour period that some committee member may
want at least put on the agenda for purposes of discussing whether there
is any interest in the committee in pursuing it. And given the
turnaround time of various proceedings, if that cannot even be raised
for purposes of deciding whether it should even be on the agenda until
the next meeting, we might be really going against the very intention of
our desire to have meaningful input.

I think we would want to call upon ourselves to exercise the discipline
that\'s behind the spirit of this resolution, but give ourselves the
flexibility to always introduce at the last minute an item, and then
whoever is introducing it would have to describe the basis for not
having presented it in 48 hours, and that will either be a credible
explanation that will carry the day and put it on the agenda, or it will
be considered too little, too late, sorry, we\'re not going to consider
it.

MR. ELLIS: Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: I guess I have a question for Scott. Ken McEldowney,
Consumer Action. I have a question for Scott on that. I certainly know
that committees that I am on at the California Public Utilities
Commission, unless something is on the agenda, certainly you cannot
reach a vote on it. And I\'m wondering whether or not there is a similar
regulation in place here for the FCC in terms of its advisory committee.

If there is, we might be able to sort of discuss it, but not bring it to
a vote.

MR. MARSHALL: I think that is correct, Ken. Again, the matters that this
committee discusses must be noticed in the Federal Register in advance
and published 15 days in advance, which does preclude any substantive
business being taken up by the committee on the day of the meeting.
Certainly discussion could be had, but not a recommendation made because
the sanction for not complying within those requirement is that the
advice to the Commission would be a nullity. That\'s the ultimate
sanction for not complying with the notice requirements.

MR. ELLIS: Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I guess one note of clarification that would be helpful is
how is the agenda actually created since just because someone might have
an item that is of interest before or after 48 hours won\'t necessarily
make it on the agenda. Do we know what that process is?

MS. ROOKER: Well, it varies from meeting to meeting, depending upon if
we have from the last meeting come up with ideas. At our last meeting, I
think the idea of the working committees was formed. And so
consequently, this was pretty much preset what we were going to be doing
today with the reports from those committees and then from the
disabilities subcommittee.

So what we have in the past ‑- we have met with the subcommittee chairs,
Scott, input from other interested people. Anyone could have joined us
in conversations. But we\'d have telephone meetings to discuss what we
thought would be potential agenda items.

So it has been a fluid process that we have been learning as we go
along. Does that pretty much describe it, Scott?

MR. MARSHALL: Yeah. I think so.

MS. ROOKER: Yeah. So we\'re always looking for input for agenda items.
And anyone who wants to give us information to be included in agenda
item, it will be discussed among a number of people. It\'s not an
arbitrary decision made by one individual.

MR. ELLIS: David.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. I think it\'s in item No. 4 here. It may be in another item. But
in item No. 4 we talk about the structure of the agenda, you know,
bringing the agenda up in the meeting and talking about the structure of
the agenda. And somewhere in the report we talk about changing the order
of the agenda based on items of importance. And I think here would be a
good place to put a note about also voting or deciding which parts of
the agenda might need to be considered under two-thirds, if that\'s
applicable, you know, just to get some kind of continuity and some kind
of feel for, you know, how the day is going to go.

I agree with everything that\'s in this agenda section, and I was happy
to agree with it when we were going through it and devising it, I guess
you could say. So, you know, that\'s the only piece that I would
consider to possibly be added somewhere.

MR. ELLIS: Kathleen.

MS. O\'REILLY: A point of clarification relative to the discussion about
the notice requirements injecting a certain limitation to what can be on
the agenda and therefore voted on. I\'m drawing on a rusty memory that
in similar situations in Wisconsin with committees to the Wisconsin
Public Service Commission that had, like others, a very strict
requirement on that, that there was boilerplate language that was
included in every agenda, and the boilerplate language drew on the
essence that any issue issued publicly by the Commission between the
time that curtain comes down on notice of a public meeting and the time
that the committee met, any issue that was initiated by the Commission
in that period of time may be taken up by the committee.

It sort of incorporates it by reference. And that had been deemed, as I
recall, sufficient to comply with the appropriate public notice
requirement, but did not preclude the committee from not even being able
to take up for the purposes of referring to a committee, for potential
discussion, and a possible resolution an issue of such vital importance
that came up during that gap that they were not ‑- they would not even
be able to give advice to the Commission, which is what their mission
was in the first place.

So I\'m wondering if we might determine from the general counsel\'s
office based on the language and restrictions of the notice requirement,
public notice requirement of the Commission, whether there is any
compliance language that could be included in every agenda that\'s part
of the notice of this committee that would accommodate and balance
between that appropriate concern about public notice and yet not
preclude us from taking up those kinds of FCC initiates that might arise
in the interim.

MR. MARSHALL: This is Scott Marshall. Kathleen, I have made a note, and
we will address it with the OGC\'s office and see if that\'s possible.

MR. ELLIS: Micaela.

MS. TUCKER: I\'d like to add ‑- this is Micaela. I\'d like to add an
illustrative point to that exact issue very quickly from something that
actually came up in the disability subcommittee. If we talk about an
issue of vital importance, for instance, communications issues after
September 11th, there were many people with disabilities who mentioned
that they had a difficult time getting important communication items
about what was going on after the disaster.

So if the FCC came up with a recommendation or something like that after
some sort of event of that kind of importance, it would be very
important, especially for this committee, to be able to take up that
issue, and very quickly move on it.

MS. ROOKER: This is Shirley Rooker. I think that at our next meeting, we
can get some resolution as to whether or not we have any flexibility in
the agenda items and what we can add and can\'t add. And we can present
that at our November meeting. Agreeable, Scott?

MR. MARSHALL: Sure.

MR. ELLIS: Any other discussion of agenda? So let\'s hold of that item,
that motion, until we get some clarification from the GC\'s office, and
we\'ll work on that.

The next item we talked about was the size and make-up of the committee.

MS. ROOKER: Rich, excuse me. Did we actually formally vote on the
quorum.

MR. ELLIS: No. We\'re going to put together a motion and come back after
break.

MS. ROOKER: Are we going to table the quorum as well? Okay.

MALE SPEAKER: Yeah, until after lunch.

MR. ELLIS: Yeah. We\'re going to work \--

MS. ROOKER: Oh, okay. Thank you.

MR. ELLIS: ‑- over the break and then come back. We\'re going to yield
our time and reclaim five minutes later on.

(Laughter)

MR. ELLIS: The next item was the size and make-up of the committee, and
not individual committee members, but the committee as a whole. Right
now we\'re about 40 people. If everyone gives their piece on every
issues, we\'ll be here for days when we had a meeting. And also, under
the current protocols, if a member leaves the committee, you know,
permanently, the sponsoring organization can appoint someone in that
person\'s place. We had some concern about that. There was discussion
that in many cases a corporate or organizational representative was
selected because that specific person has expertise that might not exist
in other representatives from a corporation or an organization, and we
were concerned that we might as a committee lose expertise under that
type of arrangement.

We were also concerned that this requirement that the organization
appoint their own member kind of diminishes our ability to bring in new
blood into the committee and get representation for areas which are not
currently represented.

We recommended that the group be reduced in size to 25 members from our
existing 40 and that representation between disability, consumer, and
corporate interests be roughly equal. As Scott mentioned, you can\'t be
exactly equal, but it\'s one of those things where you know it when you
see it.

We also made the point that corporations have many more avenues for
getting their input into committee decisions or into Commission
decisions, so we felt it vitally important that the members representing
disability organizations and consumer organizations have their say and
be well represented on this committee.

Now Andrea had concerns about our thought that the Commission should be
able to appoint a new replacement member after soliciting input from the
department member, the organization, the committee as a whole, and the
general public. Andrea\'s concern was that ‑- why don\'t you speak for
yourself rather than me ‑-

MS. WILLIAMS: Go ahead.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. So far so good? She felt that it was important that
organizations understand their responsibility to have members on their
staff who have this expertise, and that by requiring the organization to
replace their department member, that would be more of an incentive for
them to develop this kind of expertise and identify it in the
organization. Is that ‑- all right. Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: I think also the other way of doing it is have consumer
groups and disability groups have two votes each. But \--

(Laughter)

MR. McELDOWNEY: No. Yeah. I think that\'s it\'s ‑- I guess I\'m a little
torn because I think that certainly at times having 40 people is a
little unwieldy. But I\'m a little worried in terms of losing some
expertise if we drop all the way down to 25. It might make sense to drop
down a little bit, you know, 33 or something like that, as opposed to
all the way to 25.

I too support the thing in terms of that as I understand what the
original intent was, that the Commission was really appointing
individuals as well as an entity. So I think they were appointing the
individuals primarily who would represent a certain area. I think it\'s
entirely appropriate for if there is a vacancy for the Commission to
replace ‑- to appoint the person who is the replacement solely with the
recommendations that come from people who want to be on this committee.

Again, it\'s the way we do it in California with the lifeline committee.
In essence, an organization does not own a seat on the lifeline
committee. In essence, it\'s the responsibility of the Commission to
appoint the members of it, and again, recognize their needs to be ‑-
each area represented.

So I certainly would support the idea of some reduction in the size of
the committee. I like the idea that was in the report that there be
industry representatives, disability representatives, and consumer
representatives, but that in essence an industry person should not be
having one of the disability seats. It\'d be one of the industry seats.

But I do think that we should respect the ability of the FCC to appoint
not just the original members of the committee, but also the ones who
are filling vacancies.

MR. ELLIS: Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: This is Andrea Williams from CTIA. In my e-mail to Rich ‑-
unfortunately, I really wish I could have shared it with all of you. My
concern is that yes, the C/DTAC has one goal in terms of providing the
Commission with incentives, with advice on consumer and disability
issues. But there are some of us in the industry who also saw this was
another opportunity to get other industry representatives involved in
access building consumer issues that may not have had an opportunity or
the appropriate opportunity in the past to do so.

I\'m concerned that by taking those ‑- by that company not having that
particular seat on the committee, that there is no incentive for that
company to replace and make sure that they have the expertise within
their companies.

One of the things that the C/DTAC has done is in terms of gotten what I
say the visibility of accessibility issues from senior management
because when the FCC puts out a public notice and says we want industry
representatives, whoever the industry representative is going to appoint
has to go through senior management approval. So they know that this is
an important issue. And I\'m just very concerned we\'re going to lose
that momentum that ‑- as you know, several of us, who I call the
ombudsmen within our companies and within our organization on
accessibility and consumer issues have gone so far and gotten ‑- and
it\'s great to have other organizations and other industries who are as
committed as we are.

I\'d be bold to say that I\'m sure if certain industry reps and
companies and organizations would not have reached out and bid on the
C/DTAC or addressed this issue unless the FCC had asked them to be on
the C/DTAC committee.

MR. ELLIS: Susan.

MS. PALMER: I understand the concern that you have. And I think that
it\'s important there is some continuity. On the other hand, I think if
that\'s the only thing keeping a company going is involvement in that,
that would be a sad thing.

I think, you know, maybe we can get around it by saying that we first
recommend that the company is ‑- there is a request to the company to
see if there is someone with appropriate expertise to fill the seat, and
maybe that\'s a first procedural step, and then, you know, leave it
open.

I prefer the idea of having it as an industry representative, and maybe
there is someone else within the industry who has equal expertise. There
may be some very specific topics when it comes to consumer organizations
as well, and there may be a need, for example, for someone who has a
really strong background in TRS. And just because you are a member of a
deaf organization or another organization, you may not have that
expertise. So I would rather leave it open to the discretion of the FCC
and not assume that there is an organizational replacement.

The other thing is there is a critical piece which has to do with the
dynamics of the group, and I think that that\'s ‑- it\'s critical and
important. It\'s very hard to quantify. And I think that that ‑- again,
I would like to leave it open for the best people who have the
background and particular expertise rather than narrowing it to the
particular organization.

You know, I think a way around it, too, would be to say, you know,
companies are welcome to have alternates and maybe their first choice
after having a ‑- you know, if a primary person leaves, they have the
alternate that would sub permanently, and that way we can address both
needs.

The other thing is I didn\'t understand, Ken, what you were saying about
an industry representative filling a disability seat. Are you just
saying that there needs to be a balance?

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah, yeah. I think so. I mean, I think it was an issue
more of just in terms of making sure that there was sort of
representation, as Rich said, equally industry, disability, and
consumer. Yeah.

I think the other thing, just ‑- I\'ll sort of sneak this in now. In
terms of response to Andrea, I understand her concern. I have been on
committees with commissions and otherwise in which certainly the first
person who came had incredible interest, expertise, and concerns, and
once that person left, often the commitment of the corporation left. And
what they did ‑- this is a little bit better than this. But sometimes
they sort of looked around, are there any volunteers. And they would
send somebody who had no expertise whatsoever. And again, as I just went
through the protocols, the chairperson of the Commission has the
responsibility of appointing the individuals and the corporations. There
is nothing in there that basically says that the corporation has the
ability to appoint their replacement.

And certainly one of the things we found from our early meetings is that
there were a lot of people who ‑- a lot of individuals and corporations
and groups who wanted to be on the C/DTAC who were not able to get
seats. And I think that if in fact someone leaves, it opens up the
opportunity for the chairperson or the Commission to weigh whether or
not the replacement should come from that entity or from another entity,
who may even have more interests and expertise.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council ‑-

MR. ELLIS: Wait, wait. We have got a bunch of hands up. We\'ll do David
first, and then Joe, and then Jim, and then Andrea. David.

MR. POEHLMAN: Sorry, Rich. Thank you very much. This is David Poehlman
with the American Council of the Blind. Just to briefly touch on this
issue of how replacements are made, I think we have a pretty good
process here in the report about soliciting nominations from the
community and from the corporation itself. And, you know, I think that
those nominations will be made intelligently, and I think that the FCC
will more than likely provide us with a replacement for the member
that\'s departing based on the departing members\' recommendation and
the process we have outlined here that will allow us to move forward.

My concern is with the statement about a disability seat being taken by
an industry representative. In the real world, people lead lives that
are relatively complex. There are some people who work for industry, but
who are also disabled and/or members of disability organizations. I
think it would be overly preclusive to set a limit of having a person
not be able to represent their organization as a disabled person just
because they work for a company.

I can see that, you know, that might have to be a battle that would be
fought between the company and the individual or whatever, but as far as
being put forth as a nominee and being accepted by the committee, I
really don\'t see that as an issue. And the other thing I\'d like to do
is a time check because we have one more item of crucial importance in
this report that I think we should address.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Joe.

MR. GORDON: Even though I\'m here as an alternate today for Brenda
Battat ‑- I\'m Joe Gordon from the League for Hard of Hearing ‑- I feel
comfortable speaking because I\'ve been at every meeting of this
committee from 8:00 a.m. until 6:00 p.m. Write that down, Scott. And I
agree with Ken. I would be cautious about reducing the size of the
committee. I look back to the hearing aid compatible committee, where I
was a full member. I believe that was 1995. And we had over 30 members.
And a great deal of the work was done to get hearing aid compatible
phones and amplified phones was by breakaway subcommittees.

I know at the last meeting it was agreed here to sort of not have the
breakaway subcommittees again. But I think a lot can be accomplished by
having a breakaway subcommittee, which would be a smaller number of
members, and then reporting back to a larger, 30-, 35-member committee
for action to the Commission.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Jim.

MR. TOBIAS: Yeah. Jim Tobias. I guess I\'m kind of agnostic about the
right size of this committee. I\'m more concerned about the committee\'s
function, and that is to gather input from the various constituencies
and to distribute output to them. And I think that focusing on the
internal operations of the committee rather than its outreach and
liaison and extending its outreach and inreach, you know, whatever that
means, much more broadly.

I don\'t think we\'ve taken full advantage of some of the opportunities.
You know, like we have the web streaming that\'s going on right now, and
I look forward to the day that we\'re getting some kind of return
channel. You know, we\'re seeing something on the screen that says there
are 352 people watching this right now, and they get to press a button
from one to nine or zero to nine as to how relevant or interesting or
important they think the topic they think we\'re discussing right now.

And there are those opportunities. This is the Federal Communications
Commission. And I think we have a chance to do a much better job in
collecting and reaching out to people. And I don\'t know if this is a
beltway thing. Coming from New Jersey, when we say belt, we mean
something very different.

But I do feel that there is a little too ‑- that\'s right ‑- a little
too inward focus, and I guess I\'d rather get to the meat of the topics
than go through so much organizational stuff.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. I like the idea of having a viewership externally
helping us put us out of our misery. If they get so bored with an item,
we can just stop talking about it and move on.

(Laughter)

MR. ELLIS: We\'ll have to consider that some other time. Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: I just want to follow up in terms of what Bob addressed in
terms of what is put forth in the report. I don\'t have a problem with
the Commission. I know they will always have final approval and
appointment of who is on the committee. I just want to make sure that
the organization, the members leaving, have I guess you\'d say option if
they have the appropriate expertise within their companies. And I think
a strong message should be sent to the industry, companies, and
organizations that you need to get the expertise.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Any more discussion? Nanci.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: I just want to add one comment. This go back to our
earlier discussion about the attrition rate at meetings, that part of
being a committee member is fulfilling your commitment in being here for
the entire meeting.

I don\'t know. Maybe we should consider some kind of ‑- I don\'t want to
say qualification. But if people miss meetings, or maybe if they miss
two meetings, or they have unexplained absences or something, then the
Commission has the right to replace them. I think both of these go hand
in hand.

MR. ELLIS: Somebody in the corner. Okay. Paul..

MR. SCHROEDER: Hi. Paul Schroeder, Alliance for Public Technology. You
know, I\'m kind of with Jim. I think we have aired this issue pretty
well, and I suppose that we\'d probably vote zero, if that\'s the lowest
number, on the relevance of some of this discussion for folks outside.
But this is an important issue.

The only point I wanted to make was I particularly was pleased with the
comment in the report that talks about the relative level of input that
consumers and disability groups have with respect to Commission
proceedings compared to industry. I think this committee has actually
worked remarkably well in most respects in the issues that it has tried
to take on. And it\'s interesting if you go through the list that the
largest single constituency by far is industry, depending on how you
count people, 17 or 18 of the members, so almost half. And yet, I think
we have had a very good, productive dialogue.

Part of me is almost where Ken is tongue in check, which is we need to
make sure in a going-forward basis if we really recommend and the
Commission really takes up keeping such a committee moving that it is
able to reflect the views adequately of consumers and disability groups
on Commission matters. And it has got a very important job in doing
that.

So part of me says, you know, yeah, we ought to try to strive for some
level of balance. But the balance ought to be tilted certainly in favor
of consumer and disability groups in a general fashion. Having said
that, though, we\'ve done quite well, and I think the level of
discussion and dialogue has been quite enhanced by the fact that we have
these large numbers of representations from various groups.

I suppose if push came to shove, I would say ‑- I would vote for a
smaller group. I would vote for a balance that is more ‑- you know,
something along the lines of if you took 25, it would be something along
the lines of nine disabled, nine consumer, seven industry. I think
that\'s the right kind of balance to have in this discussion. But, you
know, I\'m not going to ‑- I wouldn\'t be one to fall on my sword over
that because I think the example we\'ve shown for the last couple of
years is that we can work cooperatively, even where we may be on
different lines of the industry/consumer/disability divide.

MR. ELLIS: Okay, great. Anybody else have any ‑- Kathleen.

MS. O\'REILLY: Just briefly. I too commend the industry representatives
for the role they\'ve played in having things run much more smoothly
than I would have predicted. On the other hand, I think in part that
reflects the relative benign nature of our deliberations to date. We
have not really taken up hugely controversial items. And since we\'re in
sort of a forward looking requirement here with respect to the charter
and who we are, I think it\'s important for us to remember that anyone
who would sit here as a representative of a for-profit corporation
industry has a legal requirement, a legal requirement, that consistent
with the law that corporation has to ultimately serve the interests of
the shareholders.

So although someone I don\'t think should ever be precluded from sitting
here if in fact they work for a particular industry whose operation
comes before the FCC, but is sitting here in a representative capacity
for an organization. I think that that should not be precluded, but that
the disclosure of where the employment is should be part of the mix so
that the credibility of our body is never compromised.

I think we all have to be very vigilant about protecting the credibility
and the potential effectiveness. If we\'re going to be making
recommendations to the Commission, which so many of us passionately want
to start to happen, on issues that inherently some of them will
represent a conflict between some of the carriers and industries
represented on this committee and before the Commission, that we have
to, you know, with a very realistic sense understand that the
composition of our committee, the eligibility for that composition, the
allocation of those slots among those three sectors is inseparable from
whether or not we will ever be able to take up really meaningful issues,
however potentially controversial and do so in a way that the byproduct
of it has credibility.

MR. ELLIS: Ken, final comment.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. It is sort of reflecting ‑- this is Ken McEldowney
‑- reflecting back on what David and Kathleen said, I guess the intent
of what I was saying was that someone who works for ‑- who represents a
consumer group or a disability group but happens to work for an industry
group, they would not be counted as an industry representative. I think
that the issue for me is sort of who you are representing as opposed to
who you work for. And so I think it\'s ‑- that\'s the real issue. If
you\'re representing a corporation, you fall into the corporation slot,
if you\'re representing a consumer group, and so on.

MS. O\'REILLY: But we would have to know whether the industry you work
for has as part of your job description or whatever else your
arrangement with that employer put certain limitations on what you can
or cannot do here. We can\'t read the minds of what that relationship
is, but I think we need to be very, very careful by not putting some
person in a compromise situation because to advance their personal point
of view on behalf of a person with disabilities or as a consumer is at
odds with the stated position of their employer that could put them in
great jeopardy.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. I\'m going to ‑- there is probably somebody calling for
us, saying to move on. What I wanted to do is let\'s ‑- we\'ll go back.
We\'ll get a weigh-in of our recommendation. We\'ll vote on it maybe
next meeting, with all that stuff incorporated. But can we get a quick
show of hands in terms of size? How many think 40 is okay? Raise your
hands.

(Show of hands)

MR. ELLIS: Thirty-five?

(Show of hands.

MR. ELLIS: It looks like 35 is the number we\'re moving towards. Okay.
All right. And our final discussion item was ‑- all right. Well, we can
go ‑- all right. Thirty?

(Show of hands)

MR. ELLIS: Twenty-five?

(Show of hands)

MR. ELLIS: No. You can\'t vote twice. All right. My take looks like
thirty-five was the number that got the most. So we\'ll use that number
as our bogey.

Finally, the last topic we talked about was funding for C/DTAC members
to come to the meetings. As you know, many of us live and work in the
D.C. area. Getting here is not an issue. For some of us, it is an issue
because we live or work way outside the D.C. area, especially consumer
and disability representatives. And we are concerned that these
members\' participation is endangered every meeting because they have to
go out and hold a tin cup out and get money to come here.

Likewise, some of our corporations want to further the workings of this
committee, but don\'t like being put in the position of sort of being
expected to be the ones to fund folks. Because we don\'t have money in
our budgets either, it\'s frustrating for us as well. So we would hope
that we could find some way that the Commission could fund members
through some sort of allocation of funds from a governmental source.

If we can\'t do that, we\'d at least like to see a fund set up to be
administered by Shirley\'s organization or the chair to sort of get the
direct link between the funder and the fundee sort of cut because we
have heard from some members that when they are sponsored by the XYZ
corporation, they believe there is a sort of implied requirement that
they have to support that organization\'s initiatives at the meeting.

That\'s probably not the case, but there is that implied conflict of
interest. So we would hope that if we cannot get government funding,
that we\'d at least set up a sort of neutral reservoir for the funds
that corporations or organizations who want to donate could put into
that fund, and those funds would be disbursed by that third party.

MS. ROOKER: Before we move on to that ‑- this is Shirley Rooker ‑- could
I just ask for clarification? Did we decide that 35 was the optimum
number? Is that going to be under advisement? Do we want to do a vote on
that? I\'m just trying to get the record straight.

MR. ELLIS: I was going to put together a motion and bring it up at the
next meeting.

MS. ROOKER: At the next meeting, okay, which would be the last one under
our current charter.

MR. ELLIS: Right.

MS. ROOKER: All right. Thank you. I\'m sorry. I didn\'t mean to
interrupt, but I wanted clarification.

MR. ELLIS: Any discussion on the funding issues? Rebecca first, and then
Ken second.

MS. LADEW: This is Rebecca Ladew. As you know, I\'m participating ‑-
I\'m representing Bob Segalman. And the reason why he couldn\'t be here
is because he has no funding. So he asked me to fill in for him so that
I could participate in the committee for him.

MR. ELLIS: Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. This is Ken McEldowney again. I\'m sure it has
been clarified for me before in terms of why there cannot be Commission
funding, but I\'m still confused. I have been several entities, for
example, with the Federal Reserve, in which they had the ability to
provide compensation for traveling. And I have never quite understood
the FCC could not do that, as other governmental agencies do in
Washington.

Failing anything coming directly from the FCC, I would certainly support
the committee\'s suggestion that there be some type of sort of fund set
up or an entity set up that perhaps Shirley would manage for our
corporations. Not just from C/DTAC, but other corporations as well could
put in funds that would sort of underwrite the travel of the consumer
disability members.

DR. ROCHIN: This is Rochin from the Smithsonian. At the Smithsonian, we
have approximately 25 national boards working with different museums and
programs, and this question always come up about assistance for travel
and support.

What we have learned is ‑- and we\'re quasi-federal, as well as an
endowed institution ‑- that it\'s possible to provide travel under the
government rate for the carries that organizations like the Smithsonian
have arrangements with, with the proviso that the costs of the travel be
reimbursed to the Smithsonian Institution.

It turns out that we can get plane fare at government rate that often is
half or one-third the actual fare, or the most economical fare that an
individual could get privately. And at least that\'s a start. Say if you
come from California, and you fly here on a carrier at government rate,
right now the round trip is about \$200. Economy you can ‑- and it\'s a
rate that can be reimbursed, and you don\'t lose any money. And if you
can reimburse that afterwards, then you\'ve saved a lot of money.

MS. ROOKER: This is Shirley Rooker. I have a question. What do you do in
terms of your members, since these are private individuals? How do you
ascertain with the airlines that they are in fact are getting government
rates? I mean, how do they go about doing that?

DR. ROCHIN: In our particular case, we have a Smithsonian travel
service, and tickets are arranged through that travel service. This has
to be a work-related board activity. It cannot just be for a board
member who wishes to come to D.C. It has to be an agenda of work. But
it\'s a public service, so the Smithsonian has in its policy with its
carriers that anybody working for or doing public service with the
institution could be allowed to use those special fares.

MS. ROOKER: But they use an inhouse organization to book the travel.

DR. ROCHIN: Exactly. Usually a museum ‑- or in my case, I had a center.
My center processes the travel, the authorizations, and must assure that
we get reimbursed.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Thank you.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Nanci, Andrea, Kathleen.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: I just want to add one thing. When you say that
traveling, coming from California for \$200, I come in from California,
and half the time I use my personal miles to do this. When you come in
and you don\'t stay a Saturday night, the rate goes from \$298 to \$312
to \$1260, which is what my rate would have been to come in this week.

I\'m coming back in in three weeks for something for a U.S. Department
of Ed, and again the rate was \$1260 because they didn\'t want to pay
for me to stay over on a Saturday night. So I do this, you know, then I
have to add hotel nights and days away in order to comply with the regs.
And these are also through government agencies. So I don\'t know.

MS. WILLIAMS: This is Andrea Williams from CTIA. I know that funding has
always ‑- will and always has been an issue with federal advisory
committees. So in one sense, we\'re not alone in terms of C/DTAC.

I don\'t know what the right answer is, and I think a lot of the
suggestions that have been made may help us on the short term. But I
think it would be helpful if we also look at this in terms of a more
holistic and a long-term approach.

Bottom line, the FCC has appropriators, and they pretty much determine
what the FCC is going to spend their money on. I would like to see
perhaps that we can advise ‑- give some type of advice or recommendation
to the FCC that in their next appropriations that they include a request
for funding to cover travel for out-of-town members who serve on FCC\'s
federal advisory committees, demonstrate financial hardship, and that
they have no other means to participate fully at the FCC advisory
committee meetings.

That way, you\'re not just singling out one particular advisory
committee. It becomes part of all of the FCC\'s budget in terms of all
of the advisory committees that they have. And I frame this in such a
way that hopefully it would make the recommendation more palatable to
the federal appropriators that the FCC has to go before because I think
we\'re going to continually, as long as this committee is chartered,
we\'re going to constantly be readdressing this issue at every meeting.
And if we can sort of go towards a long-term solution and a more
holistic approach, I think federal appropriators may have a different
sense of what is in the FCC\'s budget in terms of what needs to be
accommodated.

Now I\'m not suggesting that the C/DTAC goes and lobby Congress for
money. What I am suggesting is that we make a request to the FCC to
include this as a line item in their next appropriation of their next
budget, and let\'s see what happens with the federal appropriations.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. I\'m keeping a real close watch on the clock, and I
know we\'re running out of time for this. Can I ask you to like write up
the wording of a motion to that effect while we do two more comments,
then we\'ll come back to you for a motion?

MS. WILLIAMS: Sure.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. So Kathleen and then Jim.

MS. O\'REILLY: I request that the general counsel\'s office provide us,
if possible, if not before lunch, before this meeting adjourns, a copy
of the specific regulation or whatever it is that they\'re basing the
decision on that there is no authority for such travel.

I think we\'re handicapped in in our ongoing ability to keep dealing
with this issue by our recurring request to have that piece of paper in
hand, and we never get it. And since clearly there are other federal
advisory committees that do have funding available for eligible
individuals, I just think that our recommendation is going to be ongoing
shadow boxing until we start with principle No. 1. What is it that
keeping it from happening? What are the options to have that changed? Is
that an internal administrative discretionary action of the Commission,
or is it part and parcel of something larger? And just to move that
along.

But also, I just want to clarify that between now and 11:00, we are
going to at least have an opportunity to discuss some other issues
beyond what was in this memo that had been addressed?

MR. ELLIS: Well, we had an hour and 20 minutes for our discussion items,
and we have about three minutes left.

MS. ROOKER: No. Actually, you have until 11:00.

MS. O\'REILLY: We have until 11:00.

MR. ELLIS: We have until 11:00? Okay. Jim.

MR. TOBIAS: Jim Tobias. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, if
we\'re going to take a long-term view on participation in committees
like this, we can\'t be talking about travel to and from Washington,
D.C. as the be-all and end-all.

For every person in this room ‑- here is a target for the committee. For
every person who is on the committee, at least 10 people who never show
up physically in the room should be participating in the work of the
committee. And let\'s raise that from 10 to within five years 100
people. It\'s still not a lot of people, even if we\'re talking about 35
members, to have 3,500 participants around the country. There is no
technological limitation to doing that.

We have been talking about being respectful of people\'s time. I don\'t
think I\'m the only person in the room who says, well, you know, about X
to the X percent of this meeting was germane to my agenda. I think
that\'s more true of remote participants, people who might have only one
issue that they really care about. Is it respectful of their time, even
if we can find the money to schlep them to Washington and then schlep
them back home? That seems to me profoundly disrespectful of their time,
as well as ours.

So I would want us to take some substantive action towards developing a
plan for remote participation, extending the work of this committee out
to a much larger constituency.

MR. ELLIS: David.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman, and I\'ve been accumulating a few
‑- American Council of the Blind. I appreciate the swift response on the
volume here. A couple of issues that have been stacking up here. I\'ll
take the most recent one first. The man over there in the red shirt ‑-
Jim Tobias, I think? Right.

MR. TOBIAS: I\'ll change immediately. It is me. It\'s not a red shirt,
but that\'s fine.

MR. POEHLMAN: I know. I\'m just trying to bring you up there to date. I
mean bring ‑- never mind. Before I get into a hole, I\'ll move on here.

The issue that is raised by Steve is interesting in that, you know, it
is important, and one of our focus is to bring awareness and activity.
And I\'ve tried to do that. I\'ve done a lot of strategizing and pushing
and arm twisting and all kinds of interesting things like bombarding
people with e-mail. And it has resulted in some very interesting
feedback, not all of which, not even the majority of which, is going to
me, but that I\'ve heard about inadvertently.

But the issue I want to talk about is funding. It\'s fine to sit here
and say, you know, let\'s have the Commission look into why ‑- let\'s
look at why we can\'t do this, or why the Commission isn\'t doing this,
or why the FACA can\'t do this under the Commission. At the same time,
though, could we not put some energy into trying to establish what is
written here in the report, a way for at least interimly, between now
and the time the law is changed, if necessary, which may take a while,
that we can nail down this funding issue to some extent.

I would certainly move that we do that, and try to get that process
going while at the same time looking into the FACA rule and how the
Commission operates within it, and seeing if there is any way to change
that policy and move it forward for the future. Thank you.

MR. ELLIS: Susan.

MS. PALMER: I don\'t doubt that the need for funding is there. I do have
concerns, though, about making participation by corporate members ‑-
making a requirement that they provide funding for other sources. I
think given the economic times now, that that might preclude
participation by some really good people.

I do think that companies, and Cingular is one of them, have tried to
provide assistance as they can. But I would not like to see a direct
tie-in to that as part of participation.

MR. ELLIS: Yeah. And I don\'t think anybody was proposing that. I think
we were just saying if you wanted to, you could. Shirley.

MS. ROOKER: Shirley Rooker. I\'m wondering if there are foundations out
there that might be willing to underwrite some of this travel. Certainly
there are a lot of them that are very interested in disability issues,
and perhaps that\'s where we should be focusing our energies, to the
folks that have money to give away and are going to give it to someone,
and perhaps why not to the members of our committee who need assistance.

MR. ELLIS: Rayna.

MS. AYLWARD: Shirley, in an idea world ‑- this is Rayna Aylward, from a
foundation, actually. In an idea world, that would be exactly the way it
works. Unfortunately, number one, there are not a lot of foundations
that are interested in disability issues. In fact, until recently, many
of them had in their guidelines we do not do disability issues, number
one. Number two, transportation is never a popular funding area, just in
general. And number three, to say that participation in a federal
committee needs to have transportation funding, what is it in for the
foundation to get from funding which should be a federal function?

I mean, from the outside, it seems to me that this is something that ‑-
Scott, no offense ‑- but that the FCC should be taking care of. So I
really don\'t see that a very compelling case could be made for that
kind of funding, alas.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: Having worked at three different government agencies and
dealing with those three different government agencies in terms of
federal advisory committees, each agency, how they deal with their
federal advisory committees, it really depends on appropriations,
whether you have it in your line item as a line item in your budget, or
whether you don\'t.

Now I don\'t look at the FCC\'s budget. I don\'t have it before me. I
can\'t tell whether they have submitted this to Congress as a line item.
I know at the Department of Education, and with some of their federal
advisory committees, it is. The same with Department of Transportation.
So it differs agency by agency. And we also have to remember, the FCC is
considered an independent federal agency. So there may be limitations in
terms of because of the nature of the entity as being an independent
federal agency in terms of what they can do with respect to the federal
advisory committee.

MR. ELLIS: All right. Why don\'t we ‑- Matt.

MR. KALTENBACH: Matt Kaltenbach, Sony-Ericsson. As just a offer of a
mechanism that might be used to address this issue, I think in general
what we\'re really talking about is helping out some of our fellow
members to be able to participate. It\'s not completely unheard of to
have some form of a fee or a meeting due, dues kind of, a price tag to
participate in these meetings to where you might have some nominal
monetary value that could be collected that wouldn\'t impact our travel
expense statements significantly that would in effect just help out
those members that need some additional compensation or travel allotment
that we could accommodate.

I think that\'s really what we\'re talking about here is helping out a
few individual who have a lot to provide the committee that just need
expenses covered, travel expenses, which are normally minimal, nominal
expenses. So I\'d like to move that the chair entertain possibly, if the
FCC is unable to allocate and cover these expenses, that we try to cover
them ourselves. Or again, if any corporation wants to step up and help
cover this, we can put this into some of ongoing fund that the committee
can allocate towards the compensation for those individuals that require
travel to and from these quarterly meetings.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Why don\'t we do this. Andrea was going to give a
proposal to kind of recommend that the Commission look around for
sources. It might make sense to have that voted on, and then hear back
from the Commission at the next meeting, and then based on that follow
up with a secondary motion in terms of alternative funding. Does that
make sense?

MS. O\'REILLY: Could you remind me what the cutoff ‑- when the
Commission in the fall takes up the charter, could you remind me ‑- back
up the time at which the cutoff point is for input from this committee
as to how that would be revised since travel is going to be part of the
charter? So many of the things we are talking about, there is going to
be a deadline facing us as to the last day we can make a recommendation
to them on these items. And I wonder if someone could remind me what
that deadline will be.

I know that it hasn\'t even been posted when in November they\'ll take
up the charter, correct?

MR. MARSHALL: Scott Marshall. The charter expires in November. And it
takes approximately 60 days for the paperwork processing to have your
charter approved. So point in fact, the charter will have to be prepared
prior to the next meeting.

MS. O\'REILLY: That\'s what I assumed, which is why I was concerned that
we think we\'re going to have another meeting to kind of solidify some
of these items.

MR. MARSHALL: However, we could also address these issues in the
protocols document. If you\'ll recall, the charter currently does not
contain any, well, provisions in it regarding a lot of things. And we
could address the funding issue in the protocol document.

MS. O\'REILLY: But the charter expressly precludes travel money. This is
an item where if we\'re ever going to make a recommendation, we need to
do it before some date certain. So it\'s the rule of thumb that the
notice on the charter will come up on ‑- be calendared in September by
the Commission?

MR. MARSHALL: It probably will not be a Commission action. It will
probably be a decision by the chairman, as I understand it.

MS. O\'REILLY: So again, what would be the cutoff date for us to be able
to make committee agreed-upon recommendations with respect to the
charter language?

MR. MARSHALL: Sixty days before the ‑- at least 60 days before the
termination of the current charter.

MS. O\'REILLY: So September ‑-

MR. MARSHALL: It would be mid-September.

MS. O\'REILLY: When is that next meeting?

MR. MARSHALL: November 8th.

MS. O\'REILLY: I thought this was kind of our last chance at this.

MALE SPEAKER: It is.

MS. O\'REILLY: Okay. Thank you.

MR. ELLIS: Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: Rich, do you want me to \--

MR. ELLIS: Yeah.

MS. WILLIAMS: I can ‑- I move that the committee recommends that the
FCC, for its next appropriation, include a request for funding to cover
travel for out-of-town members who serve on FCC\'s federal advisory
committees, that these members have to demonstrate financial hardship
and have no other means to participate fully at FCC advisory committee
meetings.

MR. ELLIS: Second on the motion?

MS. PALMER: Second.

MR. ELLIS: Second from Susan. Any ‑-

FEMALE SPEAKER: I\'m just wondering if it would be helpful to have an
estimate of what those costs would be. The FCC I think \--

MS. ROOKER: Well, she is suggesting it for all advisory committees. Do
we just address the issue of our committee, or do we want to address the
issue of all federal advisory committees? I think we might be more
successful if we limit it to our advisory committee since that is our
prevalent concern.

MS. WILLIAMS: The reason why I\'m saying take it to all federal advisory
committees, it makes it much more palatable when the FCC has to go to
appropriators and seek funding. Now, you know, they may get a large pot
from the appropriators saying that this is a line item that you can use
for federal advisory committees; you divvy it up the way you want to. I
think we first have to get this concept before the appropriators, and
then start talking about with the Commission how they\'re going to divvy
that up.

MS. ROOKER: Okay.

MS. AYLWARD: I would kind of leave it to our FCC colleagues to
strategize in that regard. I think they might know better whether it is
better to do the broad beam approach, or maybe just do it for our group,
don\'t you think?

MS. WILLIAMS: Well, the reason why said ‑- I\'m just saying that from my
experience in ‑- that\'s what I do at CTIA as assistant general counsel
in terms of lobbying the Hill, FCC, and how you make things a little bit
more palatable for Congress.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. I get your point. I would concede that.

MR. ELLIS: Kathleen.

MS. O\'REILLY: I guess I want to impress even more urgency in my request
that the general counsel\'s office provide us ASAP this piece of paper.
It\'s extremely discouraging that we have been asking for this for
months, to try and find out what is the limitations of the constraints
on travel funds from the FCC. I appreciate and respect the background
you gave us. And those of us who have been on other committees know that
there are exceptions. There is this and that.

So the conclusion that you reach based on the assumptions you put into
it make a lot of sense. But I think we deserve to know what the specific
situation is at the FCC, and what if any creative ability within other
line items of the current FCC appropriation might provide some such
funding.

I just think that until we have from the general counsel\'s office the
specific language and basis for the current charter language that
excludes travel, we\'re spinning our wheels.

MS. WILLIAMS: Kathleen, I\'m not ‑- what I have on the table as a motion
is really more of a long-term solution, that it does not address the
immediate need.

MS. O\'REILLY: I understand, that it\'s not a substitute for what I\'m
suggesting.

MS. WILLIAMS: In terms of what we need to ‑- in terms of what they have
in their immediate line item.

MS. O\'REILLY: I understand that. That\'s a few years away and a massive
lobbying effort that would have to take place. But I think that we have
a pressing need to have that information from the general counsel\'s
office, and soon enough that we can at least take it up potentially
today before the meeting ends.

MS. ROOKER: I believe we have a motion on the floor.

MR. ELLIS: Right. That\'s Andrea\'s motion. Any discussion of Andrea\'s
motion? All right. Robert and then David, and that\'s it. Robert.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: Robert Chrostowski, TIA. Andrea, I don\'t in any way
oppose the motion. But I think you need to address the issue of why it
is significant to have the attendance in this fashion because there are
other means to attend a committee meeting that is being held at the FCC,
by teleconference, for example, or through the Internet, as that grows.

So I think I\'m more in line with Shirley\'s position from the
standpoint of directing it at this particular group, not that the other
groups do not have the need. But this group really points out the need,
I think, more than other groups.

MS. WILLIAMS: Bob, that\'s why I have the language \"have no other means
to participate fully.\" That means, you know, I don\'t know what a
person\'s particular situation is, for example. They may not be able to
use the Internet. They may not be able to participate fully through
teleconferencing. This is if you meet those qualifications that
demonstrate the hardship, and you can\'t participate any other
meaningful way through teleconference, web streaming, or whatever
technology that may allow you, then you have an opportunity at least to
have funding available to get you here physically if that\'s the only
way that you can participate fully in an advisory committee meeting.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council for the
Blind. Would we be able to add the subfunding channel to this motion, or
should that be done in a separate motion?

MR. ELLIS: I\'m inclined to do it as a separate motion.

MR. POEHLMAN: Okay.

MR. ELLIS: So why don\'t you start drafting a motion in your head, and
we\'ll vote on this one next.

MR. POEHLMAN: Got it.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. Thank you. The question has been called. Do you want to
read your motion one more time?

MS. WILLIAMS: That the committee recommend to the FCC that at its next
appropriation the FCC include request for funding to cover travel for
out-of-town members who serve on FCC\'s federal advisory committees, and
those members demonstrate a financial hardship and have no other means
to participate fully at the FCC advisory committee meetings.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. The motion has been read. Matt.

MR. KALTENBACH: Shirley, I have one question. Does the FCC have any
other precedents in terms of providing funding, travel or underwriting?
The only reason I\'m asking this question is potentially there might be
a liability concern or something else if you fund travel for an
individual who actually gets hurt or damaged ‑-

MS. ROOKER: No. There is no liability.

MR. KALTENBACH: ‑- or hurt or injured on that trip. Is there an actual
policy from the FCC that says that we don\'t provide underwriting of
travel expenses? Is that why there was a suggestion that there be a
separate foundation?

MS. ROOKER: I don\'t know. I think, Scott, can you answer that?

MR. MARSHALL: To my knowledge, no other FACA pays travel expenses for
any of its members. And we are trying to, having heard this discussion
and having been worried about resolving it for awhile, we are trying to
see what can be done in a creative kind of way to respond to this need.
But my direct answer to your question is I don\'t believe any of the
other FACAs reimburse travel.

MR. ELLIS: Okay. We have a motion on the floor. It has been seconded. We
have had discussion. All in favor of the motion signify by saying
\"aye.\"

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: All opposed? That motion appeared to carry. David, you had
your motion you wanted to do?

MR. POEHLMAN: With pleasure. David Poehlman with American Council of the
Blind. I move that we all stand together to assist our fellow committee
members, and also we look into how the FCC feels about the FACA doing
this, but assist our fellow committee members in getting to meetings,
provided that it is the only method by which this can happen for them,
and that they ‑- that this result, this effort result in an independent
provision of funds to be held perhaps by the chairperson or the
chairperson\'s organization that would be drawn upon, you know, through
means that will be established, you know, by the committee, just, you
know, to be short about it, and that people then can be freed from that
difficulty if necessary.

MR. ELLIS: Second that motion?

MR. McELDOWNEY: Second.

MR. ELLIS: Second from Ken. Discussion? Nanci.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: And that would be investigating also the possibility of
just having the FCC allow us to get a government rate on travel, which
would lower our costs, but not put the burden on the FCC. So I think
that should be part of the general investigation of what we can do and
what we can\'t do.

MR. ELLIS: David, do you accept that amendment to your motion?

MR. POEHLMAN: Yes, I do.

MS. ROOKER: And this is not an amendment, but just a request. I still
think it would be useful to know ‑- have an estimate of what costs are
involved for the people who need funding to come to the meetings.

MR. ELLIS: So it would be sort of an accounting of where the money was
going. Other discussion? Okay. We have a motion on the floor. It has
been seconded, discussion. David, do you want to read it one more time,
state it one more time for the record.

MR. POEHLMAN: That the Federal Communication Consumer Disability
Advisory Committee establish a mechanism for assisting individuals who
have challenges with funding for attending meetings, as a last resort,
to provide that funding; and further that we request that the Federal
Communication Commission provide us with directive on the applicability
of this to any of their FACAs and that they also work with us to
guarantee a federal rate in order to reduce the burden as well.

MR. ELLIS: All in favor of the motion ‑- yeah.

MALE SPEAKER: He left out Shirley.

MS. ROOKER: I\'m sitting here a little bit paralyzed. Does that mean
that the chair is going to be responsible for doing this? I think we
have to find some ‑- we need to find some solutions, but I\'m a little
bit concerned that it\'s going to end up on my shoulders to do
fundraising.

MR. POEHLMAN: No. The chair only holds it. The chair only holds it.

MS. ROOKER: I understand that. But somebody is going to have to have the
responsibility. The reality is it\'s not going to happen unless we
establish some mechanism for it happening. I have some reservations in
moving with a motion like this, which is a kind of a blanket we\'re
going to do without us figuring out how we\'re going to do.

Might we say that we would take a look at the possibilities of doing
this instead of making it a mandate for us to do it, but that we see if
there are reasonables. I mean, the FCC is looking at the issues of
funding. They\'re very aware of the position of the committee. So I\'m
just a little bit concerned about your saying that we\'re going to do
this, and we haven\'t really thought about how we\'re going to do it and
whether it can be done.

MR. ELLIS: All right.

MR. POEHLMAN: I think my original statement said \"look into,\" so ‑-

MS. ROOKER: Okay. I would accept look into.

MR. ELLIS: All right. All in favor of the motion, signify by saying
\"aye.\"

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: Opposed? All right. That motion carries. We have about two
minutes left. Kathleen?

MS. O\'REILLY: I would like to raise another issue with respect to the
charter. And if you look at the document that\'s in your folder that is
the current charter, the report from our committee discussed major
issues that were the subject of our discussion, but other issues were
raised, and one of them that I would like to raise here and will put in
the form of a motion is related subpart B, the second paragraph of the
charter with respect to the purpose of our committee. And in that
sentence, you\'ll see that it states that the purpose of C/DTAC is to
provide general guidance to the Federal Communications Commission and to
make specific recommendations on issues and questions presented to it
through the Consumer Information Bureau of the FCC.

From our first meeting, that has been identified as an arguably very
passive role for us. And I would prefer to see that the charter be
revised so as to also allow the committee at its own initiative to raise
issues that would be the subject of making recommendations to the
Commission, and would suggest that the language that I have just read
have an additional clause inserted at the end of it so that where it now
says \"through the Consumer Information Bureau,\" which, of course, will
have to be revised consistent with the new name from reorganization,
that an additional clause would be added, \"or at the initiative of the
committee.\"

In other words, to give us an opportunity to identify issues we would
like to bring to the committee and not be constrained by only those
questions that are brought to us by one division of the Commission.

So I would move that that clause be added, that we recommend to the
Commission when it takes up the charter that the charter be revised to
broaden that scope.

MR. ELLIS: Second?

MALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. ELLIS: Second, okay. Discussion?

MS. WILLIAMS: Before we ‑- I really would like to have some discussion
on this, particularly Dane\'s view. I don\'t ‑- I can only assume that
when issues are brought, Dane solicits from all of the bureaus within
the Commission ‑- I don\'t know ‑- and would really like to have some
discussion from him on this before ‑- what is the process that is done
internally, you know, how he interacts with the chairman and the
Commission.

MS. O\'REILLY: That was part of our subcommittee\'s discussion, and I
too wanted to make sure that we do that. And let me emphasize, I\'m not
aware of any example in the two years where there was some issue we
would have liked to, and it was blocked by Dane, anyone in his division,
or anyone else at the FCC. But our charter, I think, should be
independent of people and specifics, and that it\'s in our best
interest, and I think probably consistent with what the Commission wants
this committee to do or the intention, to have us have the flexibility
to identify our own issues and not put Dane or any future person on the
spot in the Commission by a piece of paper that could have them in a
position where they\'re entertaining an issue from us, and there is
nothing in this charter that authorizes that.

MS. ROOKER: This is Shirley Rooker. If I could just speak to that, I
think Dane has many times affirmed to us that he in fact wants our input
on issues, and it does not have to be a one-way street coming to us.

MS. O\'REILLY: Yes.

MS. ROOKER: So I think that makes eminent sense.

MR. ELLIS: Susan.

MS. PALMER: Kathleen, is your intent here that the members could perhaps
work to inform the FCC of issues that may be out of their purview at
this point, but heading in the direction of having an impact on
telecommunications?

MS. O\'REILLY: I think that it should be very open-ended. I think that
any member of the committee who wants to bring first to this
committee\'s attention an issue that they think should be raised with
the Commission would have the obligation to make the case that it\'s
within the scope of what our responsibility is, our issues; it\'s within
the scope of the Federal Communications Commission, and then take it
forward.

But I think it spurs us on towards taking more initiative rather than
being passive, and also to help play a role in maybe identifying on the
front end some issues that maybe no one in the Commission has yet
considered.

MS. PALMER: Is that within the ‑- do we need to add within the scope in
what you have added? I don\'t remember the wording.

MS. O\'REILLY: I\'m not against it. I don\'t think we need to because
Scott is here to ensure that nothing that we would otherwise be prepared
to present to the Commission ‑- if there are constraints because it\'s
not within the scope, I have total confidence that Scott, his staff, and
the general counsel\'s office will be that screening device.

I\'m not opposed to that revision, but I think it\'s wordage that is
probably not necessary.

MR. ELLIS: At the risk of bringing this to quick a close, can I just see
a show of hands of any wants to comment on this so we can ‑- all right.
So we have Steve and Refugio, Ken, Matt. Okay. Please try and keep your
comments real brief so we can move along.

MS. ROOKER: We\'re just ‑- we\'re out of time.

MR. ELLIS: All right. Are you calling the question?

MS. ROOKER: Could we?

MR. ELLIS: All right. The question has been called. All in favor of the
motion that Kathleen proposed, signify by saying \"aye.\"

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: Opposed?

FEMALE SPEAKER: I abstain.

MR. ELLIS: The motion carries, and one abstention.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you.

MR. ELLIS: Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. We\'re taking a break. You have 15 minutes.

(Recess)

MS. ROOKER: If we could get back to business, please. I\'d like to thank
Rich and the members of his committee, the working group, who made some
excellent recommendations for us this morning. And just to prove how
busy we\'ve been, we\'re now going to turn the floor over to Claude
Stout, who has a report of the complaints working group. And we\'ll
follow the same procedure that we did with Rich. Claude will conduct the
discussion. And if there are issues to be voted on, we will vote on
them. He\'ll carry us through that. Claude.

MR. STOUT: Thank you, Shirley. I have a Power Point presentation, and
you can see me signing at the same time, if you need to during this
Power Point presentation. One concern is that I\'m not going to be able
to hear people making comments, so if you would please raise your hand
so that I may recognize you, I\'ll try my best to keep my eye on the
table to make sure that I catch everyone favorably. And if I ask you to
make your comments again, please state your name first, much as we have
been doing all along, and raise your hand so that I may see you.

Okay. My first slide, please. This morning, I\'m providing a report to
the C/DTAC committee from the complaint and outreach working group. Are
the interpreters following me all right? Next slide, please.

The members of our working group. I\'d like to thank all of them for
their wonderful work and great participation. We have met three or four
times, and it has not been an easy job for us. Members of the working
group are myself, Paul Schroeder, Susan Palmer, Ken McEldowney, Mike
DelCasino, Brenda Battat. Of course, Brenda is not here with us today.
And we\'re very appreciative of the support that has been given to us by
the Commission, especially three people, Scott Marshall, Martha Contee,
and Suzanne Perrin. And Shirley has given us quite a bit of support
through an ex officio position.

The next slide, please. In the last meeting, we decided to establish
this working group, the complaints and outreach process. And basically,
you had charged us with a threefold mission. We needed to examine the
FCC complaint process, figure how they handle outreach, how the
Commission handles outreach, and we like to identify ways in which the
consumers, with or without disabilities, can more easily participate in
the rulemaking process.

Next slide, please. Our working group has put together several
recommendations. Some of the recommendations focus on the process,
several of the recommendations focus on outreach, and a few focus on how
to make the rulemaking procedure more easily accessible for consumers to
participate in.

The first recommendation focused on outreach. We applaud the FCC on its
outreach efforts so far. We feel that the Commission can do more,
though. By that, we mean that we recommend the Commission investigates
some new approaches on how to reach out to community members by things
such as town hall meetings, conferences and conventions going out there
and going to them, much like I said, like the town hall meetings.

Just having things like this are not necessarily enough. The FCC needs
to go out to different communities, to different places, to different
conferences, different groups and outreach to those groups directly to
try to explain people\'s rights as far as telecommunication is
concerned, et cetera. I think it would make everyday life easier for
those consumers.

I don\'t know if there needs to be a publicist involved trying to get
that kind of information out to the U.S., that sort of publicity. They
need to get that out to the public. It should be published in
newspapers. The FCC is doing a lot of great work here in Washington, and
that needs to be brought out to the people, people outside the
Washington area.

We encourage the FCC and the staff to continue going to the conferences
and conventions that they\'re going to, especially those of consumer
groups and disability groups.

And, Ken, could you explain a little bit about the mass distribution of
media? I believe you had sort of chaired that.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah, I\'m glad to. This is Ken McEldowney for Consumer
Action.

We distribute materials through a national network of some 6,500
community based organizations that serve recent immigrants,
African-American community, low and moderate income consumers, people
with disabilities, seniors and so forth. One of the things that we have
found is that while some of the groups are fairly savvy in terms of
using the Internet and things like that, many are not. A number of the
groups we work with don\'t even have e-mail in their offices.

But one thing they all have in common really is very limited budgets and
the need to get materials in hard copies in different languages to
distribute to their clients.

Each year, we distribute ‑- we create 15 to 20 new publications and
distribute about 2 million copies a year, so that there is a really
crucial need for the FCC, either by themselves or in partnership with
consumer and disability groups and corporations to do mass distribution
of printed materials in the different languages that are spoken in the
community around key telecom issues.

MR. STOUT: Thank you, Ken. We also applaud the FCC for having a web site
that shows all the different resources and procedures and so forth. And
we\'d like to encourage the FCC to investigate more online resources for
the distribution of information.

We also encourage the FCC commissioners themselves and the FCC staff in
the different bureaus to become more involved with the publications of
other agencies and other groups to help publicize some of their work,
then send copies out of here, send information out of here, get it out
to other eyes, a variety of organizations and groups all over the
country.

We have also seen the value of public service announcements. You have
seen those on television. And many times you\'ll see information about
drug use, or like the one with the person breaking the eggs, about being
brains on drugs. And they can be very powerful and very informative.
People who do watch TV see that sort of advertisement, whether that be
in the middle of their programs, in between programs. But they\'re often
very effective tools for distributing that sort of information, and we
encourage the FCC to consider somehow producing some sort of PSA for
general distribution to make Americans more aware of the important
telecommunication issues that are being worked on.

We also encourage the Commission to accept that there are press
relations that can go on on Capital Hill in Congress and here at the FCC
as well. They can work together with media outlets. If they\'re out of
town, there are town hall things; invite people in, invite the press in.
Invite the media to come and observe meetings and ask the media if they
would like to interview people for special FCC issues, get more contact
with the media out there.

Of course, depending on the process, if some things have already
happened, it would be a good idea to invite the media in more often and
have more involvement of the media. It shouldn\'t be restricted to just
announcements through reports only or through press releases only. The
media should become more involved. We can do articles, interviews,
whatever here within the FCC.

The man on the street probably hasn\'t read much about the FCC, hasn\'t
seen much about the FCC, doesn\'t know much about the reports and the
information coming out. It should be reversed. It should be that the FCC
should be more visible, should have language that the common person can
see and understand, whether it be just a two-minute, three-minute spot
somewhere on some sort of news program or in some article somewhere,
that this information be distributed through different media outlets to
make people more comfortable with the information.

As well as those new approaches, we\'d like to expand a lot of the
advertising. We\'d like to encourage the FCC to make more consumer
involvement happen, become a more representative process. For example,
if the FCC sends out announcements, people should be able to know where
to file comments, where to make their feedback known for the different
notices of proposed rulemaking that the FCC is involved with.

If the FCC distributes information about this meeting in some sort of
alternate formats, people who are, say, blind, would be able to then
read that, find out the schedule through whatever technological means,
whether it be electronic filing, or for like a blind or low vision
person, they\'re not necessarily going to be able to read a lot of the
information that is distributed in PDF format. It could be very
difficult to follow if that\'s the process that information is being
distributed through electronically.

So if we want more active participation, we need to have a variety of
formats available to get the information out to encourage people to
become involved, other than just say a PDF. I\'m sorry. Did I miss
something?

Okay. Could I finish with this one recommendation, and then we can
discuss the recommendation as a whole? Would that be all right? Thanks.

We also encourage the FCC to educate consumers about their rights and
responsibilities in the complaint process. Very often consumers don\'t
know or understand their rights. They think they know their rights, but
they find they have more rights, or they have some certain
responsibilities that they weren\'t aware of, and that can hamper their
opportunity to address their concerns.

Not only consumers need to know their rights, but they need to
understand the different steps that they have to follow in order to make
or file a complaint. Also, consumers need to understand what the
difference ‑- what different stages are of the complaint process so they
can understand when they need to be getting involved, when they\'ll be
expecting to get feedback, where they need to participate and where they
need to wait.

It\'s very important to get feedback and documentation from groups and
get information from the informal and formal complaint processes. I
think the FCC could do a much better job of clarifying those two
procedures and what is involved and which one the consumer would then be
more comfortable with can be left up to the consumer.

We also don\'t want the FCC just to be putting down a number of
complaints every three months, saying, okay, this is \--, that\'s it.
That isn\'t enough. We as a working group want the FCC to start looking
for patterns and recurrent problems and trends of problems that are
going on within the complaints in different channel of communications
issues, like the FCC be able to tell us what is happening with different
trends of the complaints that are coming in so that we become more aware
and make better recommendations as to how to manage or address those
complaints.

We\'d also like the FCC to develop over the next several years ‑- the
last few years, they have developed some wonderful special constituency
groups within telecommunications issues, for example, deaf and hard of
hearing people, and that\'s gone very well with the FCC, and we have
worked with the hearing aid compatibility issues, closed captioning
issues, relay services, et cetera, and that\'s great. We have made a lot
of progress in that area.

There are several other constituency groups, however, that have felt
perhaps slighted and would like to get that much attention on their
issues as well. And we\'d like to ask the FCC provide them some sort of
equal attention and acknowledge their issues, and that the FCC not only
continue the good work that they have been doing with the constituency
groups they have been doing such a great job with so far, but they need
to start building new relationships with some hitherto less addressed
constituency groups.

Okay. That\'s our first recommendation, sort of in a nutshell. Could we
have people raise their hands for comment? Okay, Susan.

MS. PALMER: I just have a process comment in that I think it would be
helpful to read the recommendation verbatim and then provide an
explanation because I don\'t know if it\'s just because it\'s late in
the morning or if I just have no concentration today, but it would be
real helpful for me to hear it. So first, this is the recommendation,
and then maybe a little background.

(Pause)

MR. STOUT: Could I have that first slide back up again, the
recommendation one, the beginning of that?

(Pause)

MR. STOUT: Okay. The working group strongly recommends that the
Commission expands its ongoing outreach efforts using new approaches as
follows: town hall meetings, conferences and conventions, mass
distribution of multilingual hard copies of materials, online
distribution via consumer and disability related links, submission of
publications targeted to mass media, consumer organizations, and
disability community, public service announcements, and press
opportunities with the commissioners and through the FCC web site.

The next slide, please. The group recommends that additional efforts be
made to include ensuring more active consumer participation in the
regulatory process, education of consumers regarding their rights and
responsibilities in the complaint process, responding publicly to issues
that exhibit systemic violations of acts or regulations, developing
stronger relationships with the communities with specific needs or
facing unique barriers with telecommunication products or services.

And for the future, I will read the recommendations through first and
then provide more discussion. All right?

MR. POEHLMAN: \--

MR. STOUT: The recommendations? Are there comments?

MS. ROOKER: I\'m sorry, David. The interpreter couldn\'t hear you to
interpret that for Claude.

MR. POEHLMAN: I\'m sorry. Dave Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. Just a point of braille for those following along in braille.
This is pages 74 and 75, slides four and five. And those are the things
that Claude just read.

MR. STOUT: Is there any comment on that, or should we move on to
recommendation two? Let\'s move on to recommendation two. Can we have
the next slide, please? I\'m sorry. Susan.

MS. PALMER: Okay. I\'m a process fiend today. I wonder if we should move
‑- are we going to move to have these adopted all at once, or do we need
to move on this and then to vote on it, or how does this work?

MR. STOUT: You\'re right, Susan. Shirley, would you like to comment on
that? How should we proceed?

MS. ROOKER: I think it\'s up to the committee to decide what you want to
do. If you want to propose these as recommendations to the Commission,
then that\'s entirely appropriate. If there want to be discussion before
the motion is being made, I think that probably some of the things that
are included in here the Commission is already doing. But I don\'t
suppose there is anything wrong with us restating the things that they
are doing in terms of outreach because I know they\'re doing a
significant amount of outreach in many areas.

But I don\'t know. Scott, do you have any comments on this?

MR. MARSHALL: Actually, I would say that it would be useful, I think, if
you were to go through recommendation by recommendation and make any
modifications, and then pass each recommendation. That way, it will be
very clear as to what the committee\'s wishes are.

MS. ROOKER: Yeah. There are many parts of recommendation No. 1. Is the
question that we pass recommendation No. 1 as a whole? Is that the
issue? Larry and then Kathleen.

MR. GOLDBERG: I think that there is a lot of detail there that would
definitely take through the weekend to go recommendation by
recommendation. I think the general sense is, as it reads in the very
first line, strongly recommend that the Commission expands its ongoing
outreach efforts, and the rest of the details can be submitted as text
to be provided to the bureau and the office. But the general
recommendation is a fairly straightforward and clear one, and the reason
for it has been well described.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Nanci.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: Well, it\'s not a motion. It\'s just a comment. The
other thing is maybe at this point we need to break it down ‑- I mean
after our motion ‑- break it down into different kinds of disabilities
or groups. A PSA for the blind could very well be the radio. It could be
telephone. There are many things that are already in place. We don\'t
have to reinvent the wheel. And again, with the deaf and hard of
hearing, and again with the seniors.

I think we have to really look at it from the end user standpoint. I do
know that most people think of the FCC as an organization that only
monitors television broadcast networks. I mean, they really don\'t even
understand the scope of it.

So I think it\'s very important that we break it down by what the
disability or consumer need is and what the product is.

MS. ROOKER: Would it be appropriate to put in the motion that the
recommendation be accepted and that the consideration being give is to
the audience or the end users? Would that be \--

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: Yes.

MR. STOUT: Ken, would you speak?

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yes. Thank you. Ken McEldowney. Yeah. I think that what
we tried to do in the committee was to look at all the different ways
that we could reach all the different populations that this C/DTAC was
dealing with. We did not try to break down which would work for which.
It was basically that we felt that all of these things should be done,
and certainly some would benefit, and we would reach certain parts of
the population, and others would reach others.

I think what we wanted to do was to try to outline the scope of an
outreach effort that would be needed so that I think what we would like
to see in terms of voting on this motion is not so much, you know, sort
of fine tuning it, but just whether or not the scope is sufficient to
really do the outreach job that we think the Commission should do.

So I think that the motion ‑- I would like to see sort of the motion as
a whole. Certainly, I think Larry\'s idea was a good one, but I\'m not
sure how exactly to do it. But I think what we\'d like to see is that
the full scope of it go as a recommendation to the Commission.

MR. STOUT: Kathleen.

MS. O\'REILLY: Along those lines, I wonder if there would be an interest
in a substitute motion recommending that this report in its entirety be
the basis of a resolution of support. And that way, we might be able to
proceed more efficiently so any member of the committee could identify
any additions they want, any revisions to existent language, and use the
document as an intact recommendation for purposes of a motion to save us
time. And if there is some interest in that friendly amendment, I would
offer that as a substitute motion.

MALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. STOUT: Okay. That motion has been seconded. At this point, I see no
discussion, no hands up for discussion. So could we vote on Kathleen\'s
recommendation to what Ken and Larry have proposed. In support of that?
Are there any opposed to that?

MALE SPEAKER: Hold on, please.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Wait, wait. There is a discussion. David Poehlman
wants \--

MR. POEHLMAN: Sorry. We moved a little too fast on Kathleen\'s proposal
because I\'m not quite sure what she means by \--

MR. STOUT: David, David, could I interrupt? I need folks to raise their
hands so that I can identify who is speaking. I saw no hands, which is
why I proceeded to a vote.

MR. POEHLMAN: Right. I understand that.

MR. STOUT: Are you looking to speak on the issue or to vote?

MR. POEHLMAN: I\'d like to speak on the issue.

MS. ROOKER: Raise your hand, David, so he knows where you are.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Could folks please remember that if they would like to
speak on the issue to raise their hands for me to identify them before
we vote. Go ahead, David.

MR. POEHLMAN: Yeah. It just happened a little fast, that\'s all.
Kathleen\'s use of the words \"whole report,\" I\'m not sure what that
means. Does this mean the first recommendation or the entire report of
the committee, of the working group?

MS. O\'REILLY: My intent was, having read all of the recommendations in
the report, to move that, beginning with recommendation No. 1 that
starts strongly recommended through the remainder of the recommendations
that end on page 3, which include eight recommendations, that in it\'s
entirety that be a motion of a recommendation to the Commission.

MS. ROOKER: Recommendation one you\'re talking about.

MS. O\'REILLY: No.

MALE SPEAKER: She is talking about all of it.

MS. O\'REILLY: In the interests of time, we have all had a chance to
read these. And I\'m just suggesting that it might facilitate time if
with respect to anything in any of the recommendations going
sequentially anybody has any additions or revisions, that we look at
this as a package and proceed more quickly than sort of this piecemeal
approach that I\'m afraid would consume more time than maybe necessary
or desirable.

MS. ROOKER: I think it\'s up to Claude.

MS. O\'REILLY: Yeah. It has to be a motion accepted by the original
sponsor.

MR. STOUT: Well, if we follow Kathleen\'s recommendation here to submit
the entire recommendation list, I\'m looking at some kind of general
agreement and consistence for recommendations one through eight. If we
had a formal proposal to accept the entire report of recommendations to
the FCC, that would probably work. Mike.

MR. DelCASINO: I think what Kathleen is trying to do is not get us too
bogged down. So a slight modification perhaps to her request is that why
don\'t you, Claude, go through all of the recommendations, have
discussions about each of them, but not go through the vote by vote, or
vote recommendation by recommendation, just discussion, and then we may
be able to pick up Kathleen\'s suggestion and adopt the whole thing.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Do all of you agree with the suggestion that it\'s a
good way to approach? If you\'re in agreement, would you please raise
your hand?

(Show of hands)

MR. STOUT: Okay. Then we will follow that suggestion. Is there any more
discussion on recommendation No. 1 at this point? I see no hands. I
would like to move to recommendation No. 2.

Could I see the next slide? There we go. Recommendation No. 2 reads to
encourage the FCC to recognize and publicize best practices in the
consumer, business, and disability communities serving or addressing
consumer needs. And part B recommends that we stress efforts that
increase participation and partnership between industry and consumers.

The working group felt that with the number of complaints that are
brought to the FCC, that part of the problem is the approach for
consumer complaints. There is little communication that goes on between
the different parties. We\'re looking ‑- trying to identify what would
be best for each individual problem. If the Commission offers best
practices for what one business is able to achieve to other businesses
and consumer organizations, people with disabilities, then that
information of sharing best practices might minimize the number of
complaints coming into the Commission.

So what a wonderful idea to make accessible best practices from one
organization to another. And instead of recreating the wheel, there will
be the opportunity to share those best practices to satisfy consumer
needs.

Is there any discussion on recommendation No. 2 at this point? Did I see
a hand. Yes, Robert.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: Bob Chrostowski, TIA. I would just add, so that the
statement is complete on that recommendation, where you have \"consumer
and disability communities,\" just to keep in line with the first part
of the recommendation, the tail end of the second part of that
recommendation, just add \"between industry, consumers, and disability
communities,\" just so that it will be in line with the first part.

MR. STOUT: Would you mind repeating what you\'re saying, Bob, just for
my benefit?

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: The subparagraph B of this recommendation, add to the
sentence \"between industry, consumer, and disability communities.\"
Then it dovetails to the first paragraph A.

FEMALE SPEAKER: To clarify, you mean adding \"disability community.\"
Thank you. Sorry.

MR. STOUT: Thank you, Bob. Would folks like to accept that ‑- or are
satisfied with that recommendation, to add that? I saw someone else with
their hand up over here, either one of you.

MS. AYLWARD: Okay. All right. Clause, I\'d just like to ‑- I can\'t
quite get my hands around what stressing efforts that increase
participation and partnership ‑- in other words, the part B. Could you
give a concrete example of what that would look like?

MR. STOUT: As an example, a company may be providing some sort of
testing prior to hiring individuals. If the business is performing some
sort of pilot testing, they should be encouraged to include members of
the disability communities, et cetera, to help comply with their 255
efforts. So any assessment should be involving consumer groups and
constituent groups. We want the business community to show the
involvement of consumers in the development and design process of some
product before it\'s marketed. Andrea?

MS. WILLIAMS: This is Andrea Williams from CTIA. Rayna, I can give you a
very good example. Just earlier this week, Commissioner Abernathy held a
dialogue between the wireless industry and members of the disability
community, those with developmental and cognitive disabilities to start
a dialogue between the two in terms of what type of technology, what we
foresee coming down the pike that could probably address some of the
issues of accessibilities for this particular group.

It was ‑- believe me, industry was a little nervous at first and so were
some of the consumers. But I thought it was a very, very productive
meeting. If nothing else, people walked away with knowing who to contact
within a company, what the process is within in terms of early design,
what some of the companies are doing. And I would think that would be an
example of stressing efforts, bringing parties together.

You know, when a commissioner calls you up and says I\'d like you to
attend a meeting, you don\'t tell him no. And that\'s the type of ‑- I
assume that\'s what this is ‑- what the committee means by that, that
type of an example.

MR. STOUT: Yes. As a further example, last Monday Commissioner Abernathy
went to CTIA to see the different representative constituent groups with
mobility impairments. And that was a very constructive dialogue that
went on. And from my understanding of that meeting, CTIA and the people
with the mobility disabilities have learned a lot from each other and
are planning on continuing that sort of dialogue and partnership. And
we\'d like to encourage all sorts of American companies and
organizations to copy that model. I think that would make a world of
difference.

MS. ROOKER: This is great. The two examples that you gave, the two or
three, is this something that this committee could play a role in
actually documenting ‑- or more than documenting, encouraging? I mean,
is that something that we could do with some of our industry groups,
like yours, Andrea, and some of the other groups that are represented
here? Andrea?

MS. WILLIAMS: Sure. You know, if the FCC sent out ‑- there was a press
release on the meeting. I don\'t ‑- if this group wants to support, I
don\'t know what you want to do in terms of ‑- what you had in mind.
Susan was at the meeting. Claude?

MR. STOUT: Susan, yes, please.

MS. PALMER: I think that\'s a good idea. But I think it\'s beyond the
scope of the recommendations which are going back to the FCC. I think we
can take it up later, and I think it\'s a very good idea. But I think at
this point we want to focus things that are going directly back to the
FCC. And I don\'t ‑- I would be concerned in terms of time if we added
at this point to that.

MR. STOUT: Rayna.

MS. AYLWARD: And I\'m there with you, and a little bit in the process
and content here. This is Rayna again. I\'m just wondering if we\'re
just presenting a whole bill of recommendations to the FCC saying, you
know, we want you to do this, we want you to do that, we want da, da,
da, without saying that we would like to support you in these efforts,
if there are some things that we could, you know, perhaps assist you in
doing, given our assembled expertise and the organizations that we
recommend.

I\'m wondering if we want to make that one of the considerations or part
of the package that we present to the FCC.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Rayna, this is Claude responding. I think it\'s a good
idea. And I think when we make the motion to accept this with the group,
if we are voting to approve the report being submitted, I\'d like to add
that we\'d appreciate a progress report from the staff back to this
group to see what efforts they have been making and what progress has
been going on and see what their initial efforts will be.

There seems to be some sort of question on your face, Rayna.

MS. AYLWARD: I think that\'s a great idea, that absolutely there should
be some accountability for anything that we\'re recommending and that is
accepted by the FCC. My point was only to perhaps incorporate, maybe
just as a general statement in the introduction of the recommendations,
to say that this committee stands ready to support the FCC in any of the
efforts that we\'re recommending that it makes, something along those
lines.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Thank you. Is there any further comment on
recommendation No. 2? Okay. Seeing none, I\'d like to move on. The next
slide, please.

Recommendation three reads encourage the FCC to provide an expanded,
more detailed report on a regular basis that highlights common consumer
and disability complaints. This expanded report should analyze trends
and highlight the nature of model solutions to the complaints.

As I said previously in some of that background information I was
giving, the working group wanted to make it clear that those quarterly
reports from the FCC on the complaints, how many they have received, it
needs to be a little more exact. We would like to know how many ‑- well,
first we want to know how many complaints are coming in and how many are
resolved. But we\'d like to see some of the results. We\'d like to see
‑- well, we see that the consumer is asking us that they are wanting
more results. They\'re wanting things to be done in a more timely basis.
They\'re wanting to be getting better ideas of expectations. The
consumers have expectations, and they\'d like to have those addressed.

Is there any discussion on this point? Kathleen.

MS. O\'REILLY: I don\'t want to disrupt the flow of your presentation,
and yet I think this is the recommendation that might be most
appropriate in which to raise three related issues on that that I wanted
to recommend for consideration. I\'ll describe them very briefly so that
if it\'s the will of the committee that they be taken up separately
after this report, I can well imagine that that would be a more
efficient way to go.

But certainly, I share the frustration in reviewing the annual complaint
reports and understand by way of example that despite some admiral
reforms on slamming procedures, for example, that groups that handle
complaints, such as the National Consumers League that could not be here
today, that their complaint levels are not going down.

And three issues that have routinely come up in the context of complaint
resolution, one is what is the distinction and the standard for
distinguishing between a complaint and an inquiry because how they are
handled by the Commission differs depending on whether they are a
complaint or an inquiry. And appropriately, quite a bit of discretion is
left to the people on the telephones and those who review the answers to
make that distinction. And therefore, there is much involved in both how
at the highest level that distinction is understood, how that is
communicated, and how the training is for the people who take and
respond to complaints. And so I think that that is one area.

A second area has to do with what is the definition of a complaint being
resolved. And I think we have had discussions in the past about
frustration as to how that has been interpreted.

And third, I think there is an ongoing, overarching consumer issue with
respect to any regulatory agency that when there continues to be a lack
of diminished complaints in any particular practice, that suggests an
obligation to initiate a proceeding to examine why. If despite many,
many efforts those complaint levels are staying at a certain level, I
think it\'s incumbent upon the regulators to try to determine why,
including whether or not sanctions are adequate.

So at the appropriate time, I had three short recommendations, one that
addresses the issue of the distinction between complaints and inquiries,
a second one that addresses the issue of the definition of resolved, and
a third, the issue of what the appropriate action might be if complaint
levels remain high with respect to any practice, what it would be
incumbent upon the regulatory to do in the face of that, including an
examination of the adequacy or inadequacy of sanctions.

It may not be appropriate to have those three discussed at this
recommendation of yours. I simply say having reviewed all of the good
work of your committee, that is my best identification of an issue where
they might fit. But I will just pull those back and wait the pleasure of
you as the chair as to when, if ever, you want to take those up.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Thank you very much, Kathleen. I will respond to you. I
think, though, that there were some other people with their hands up for
discussion. Andrea?

MS. WILLIAMS: First of all, Kathleen, CTIA just recently went through
this whole process about eight months ago with the Consumer Information
Bureau in terms of what is the distinction between a complaint, a formal
complaint, informal complaint, and an inquiry, how you define
resolution, and also how are the CAMS trained to recognize and putting
complaints in certain categories.

I would strongly recommend that before we have any action, that we have
maybe perhaps a presentation or discussion with Thomas Wyatt and Martha
Contee, who were very, very helpful in helping us, the wireless
industry, get a handle on some of this information.

It\'s interesting. Consumers have some concerns regarding the reports
and expanding them, and so does industry. Well, I know the wireless
industry because we\'re trying to get a handle on these complaints. As
you know, we\'re a very competitive industry, and you don\'t want your
subscribers turning. And complaints is one way for them to turn very
quickly.

So we\'re trying to get ahead of the curve, and have asked the consumer
and government affairs office to help us in terms of giving us more
detail so that we can track the trends with what we\'re seeing from some
of our internal research also, as well as the FCC\'s research.

MS. O\'REILLY: And there really is no need to reinvent the wheel.

MS. WILLIAMS: Right.

MS. O\'REILLY: Models for this have been in the consumer domain for 30
years, going back to lemon laws with automobiles. Many industries have
had to use them, Land\'s End and so forth. So I\'m just saying that
there is not here a labor intensive need for the Commission or this
committee to start from scratch, that this is an opportunity for us to
take advantage and fine tune a long developed expertise in these areas.

MS. WILLIAMS: But I would really like to hear from Thomas and Martha. I
would like for everyone on this committee to share ‑- have the benefit
of the information that they have in terms of the process that\'s used.

MR. STOUT: I believe Joe was next, and then Ken.

MR. GORDON: Claude, I remember at the last meeting the point of
complaints or concerns was brought up, and both I believe Brenda Battat
and Larry Goldberg mentioned that other organizations do get many, many,
many complaints or concerns from their members. And I remember someone
saying, well, maybe those concerns or complaints from the members of
these organizations can somehow be submitted to the FCC. And would you
want to in recommendation No. 3 in the first paragraph say \"highlights
consumer and consumer organizations\' concerns and complaints,\"
something like that because then the number of concern, complaints ‑- I
don\'t know which word to use ‑- that comes into the FCC would be more
indicative of what the problems are?

MR. STOUT: Okay. Thank you. Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. Ken McEldowney. Yes. I sort of want to pick up on
that. I think the points that Andrea and Kathleen make are very good. I
think it might be good to have a presentation like at the next meeting
on this issue, and then maybe we want to establish ‑- get another
subgroup to sort of fine tune it and come up with some specific
recommendations for the Commission on this.

I think we can need some more information before we move ahead.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Mike?

MR. DelCASINO: This is Mike DelCasino. I guess I don\'t disagree with
anything that I\'ve heard here so far. I also guess that it seems to me
that the recommendation as it stands now is not a bad recommendation.
And I would be inclined to I think take Kathleen up on her suggestion
that we allow this recommendation to go forward the way it is and take
up a separate activity to bore in on more detail into those items that
she mentioned, which, you know, I think we all agree are very complex
and we could probably talk about for a very long time.

So that\'s where I am on it. I\'d make that a motion if anybody wanted
to.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Is there any more discussion? Judy.

MS. HARKINS: Like Joe Gordon, I recall that a lot of the discussion was
around the fact that a lot of people around the table receive more
complaints than the FCC does. And I recall that the committee was to
address with the FCC as part of its work the extent to which people in
that situation might refer complaints to the FCC. And if I recall,
almost everybody around the table raised their hand when that came up,
and some of us dropped off in the interests of having a smaller group.

Clause, so I want to ask you, do you see that as being anywhere in this
report, that groups like yours could somehow refer the complaints you
receive or in another way funnel information about consumer complaints
to the FCC?

MR. STOUT: Oh, yes.

MS. HARKINS: Which recommendation would you say covers that?

MR. STOUT: Well, actually, we did not put any particular recommendation
about us bringing the groups, bringing complaints to the FCC. I mean,
the FCC, of course, would say yes, you can do that for their accepting
of the consumer organizations bringing them, but the process is more the
problem. So that\'s why this was not part of our recommendation.

But do you think it should fit under this recommendation?

MS. HARKINS: I just wanted to make sure I understand what you said. You
said that the FCC said, sure, that\'s fine, that organizations could
deliver masses of complaints to ‑-

MR. STOUT: Right.

MS. HARKINS: ‑- the FCC, FCC info?

MR. STOUT: Yes.

MS. HARKINS: During the committee work, that was when you discussed
that?

MR. STOUT: During the working group, yes. Susan.

MS. PALMER: If you look at recommendation No. 1, it talks about
strengthening ties with consumer groups to better understand the needs.
And I think that that somehow addresses what you\'re talking about.
It\'s part 4.

MS. HARKINS: That sounds a little ‑- I can see where this might fall
under it, but that does sound a little vague.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Was there ‑- Judy, are you satisfied? Do you still have
something to add?

MS. HARKINS: I was kind of hoping for more specificity, yes. I don\'t
know, because a lot of people raised their hand on this issue at the
last meeting. So if anyone else wants to comment on this, I\'d
appreciate it.

MR. STOUT: Okay. I want to ask you, Judy, do you want the report to show
which complaints came from individuals and which complaints came by way
of an organization? Would that be helpful? I\'m just trying to
understand your point exactly.

MS. HARKINS: The point was to what extent organizations receiving
complaints can and should forward those to the FCC. Larry Goldberg is
not in the room at the moment, but his comment was that he receives more
complaints on captioning before breakfast each day than the FCC receives
all year. That was Larry\'s comment. And I would like more guidance
about that because when I receive a concern from a consumer, I don\'t
know exactly what the proper process is.

MR. STOUT: One second, Larry. I wanted to respond. I recall from the
previous meeting we asked the staff if it is okay if we as organizations
bring complaints, forward complaints, and we were told yes. They
answered in the affirmative. So I don\'t know \--

MS. HARKINS: Okay. I thought that was the task of the working group. But
if that was resolved at the last meeting, that\'s fine. That meets my
concern.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Larry?

MR. GOLDBERG: Right, Claude. I think at that last meeting I asked for
specific address, phone number, fax, e-mail for complaints that come
through our organization and where they should be channeled. And we were
given that specifically by Jennifer Simpson, and we are now doing that.

MS. HARKINS: Okay, good. Okay. Sorry.

MR. GOLDBERG: Later on, I see a recommendation No. 6 about particular
captioning or video description, or if you want to generalize,
disability complaints because we were concerned about those getting lost
in the mix. And that is a problem. We should pick that up, too.

MS. HARKINS: Okay. I missed that then. Sorry about that.

MR. STOUT: Okay. I don\'t see any other hands raised for further
discussion on recommendation three. But I do think that we should keep
in mind Kathleen\'s three recommendations. I think she raised some very
good issues, that we hear that there are complaints, but where does it
go from there.

What we have been focusing on since the last meeting is not how the FCC
handles complaints versus questions. We want to know how they ‑- you
know, a report on how they respond to the complaints. That\'s what we
have been focusing on, and the areas the questions tend to come up in.
But Kathleen raises a very good point, that how do they decide what
qualifies as a question, and then how also are things resolved.

If you approve our report, and that\'s put down in the minutes of the
meeting, then I\'m sure that we will have Kathleen\'s three
recommendations. And that in itself could be a basis for another working
group, those three points.

MS. O\'REILLY: Just to clarify, although I identified the three
categories, I have not yet provided you with the language I would have
recommended as the resolution or recommendation for each. I could
provide that for the minutes or now, whatever is preferable.

MR. STOUT: Well, is it acceptable to the full committee?

MS. O\'REILLY: If they are in the minutes, it doesn\'t mean you agree
with them. It simply means ‑- if I understand your inquiry, did you want
to consider including them as a recommendation, or that those three
topical areas be included as a recommendation for further work by the
committee?

MR. STOUT: Yes, correct. Right, as part of this report. Is that okay
with you, Andrea?

MS. WILLIAMS: I thought Mike had suggested that we move those three
items to further work by the committee, and he made a motion, which I
second, that ‑- am I wrong, Mike? Oh, okay.

MR. DelCASINO: This is Mike DelCasino. We just had a whole bunch more
discussion about that since then.

MR. STOUT: Would you like me to proceed with the formal recommendation
‑- with the formal motion? I\'m sorry. Okay. So Mike made it. Andrea
seconded it.

MS. O\'REILLY: I guess I would like to ask whether there is any harm in
at least in this report identifying those as three important areas
because as a consumer advocate with 30 years experience, what hit me
about this report is some of the biggest consumer complaint issues that
loom aren\'t even hinted at here. And so I think that\'s understandable
that there would be a presentation at a future meeting. Yes, they\'re
complex. Yes, they need resolution, but to identify that as part of the
complaint handling process at the FCC, which this committee addressed,
that there are concerns about what are the standards and implementation
for the distinction between a complaint and an inquiry, concerns about
what is the definition of a complaint that is resolved, and concerns
about in the face of continued high levels of complaints for any
particular practice, what is the best method to ensure that that is
addressed, just so that this complaint ‑- or that this report reflects a
greater whole of traditional consumer complaint related issues that are
very specific to this Commission and these issues that are ‑- the
silence on them screams out from this document, in my view, because they
have been raised by consumer advocates for years.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Andrea and then David.

MS. WILLIAMS: This is Andrea. Maybe I lost track. But I thought what we
were going to do is include these three issues in the minutes so that
when the minutes go to the FCC, as well the issues would have been
raised in the minutes, and that we would have a presentation at the next
meeting on those three areas that have been identified in the minutes of
the meeting.

MS. O\'REILLY: They\'re not mutually exclusive. I certainly support
having them addressed in a very specific fashion at a future meeting.
But the weight they have is simply being in passing in the minutes
compared to the weight they would have in a report on this topic is to
me very significant. And I would prefer that the report at least ‑- and
it\'s for the committee to decide whether the committee wants to
recognize the importance of those three topics in this report and
recommendation of the committee, or simply have them a more passing
footnote.

MS. WILLIAMS: No. It wouldn\'t be a passing footnote.

MR. STOUT: David and then Ken.

MR. POEHLMAN: I have a suggestion. Looking at recommendation No. 8, FCC
should provide assistance to consumers in framing complaints and help
identify appropriate solutions for special categories of complaints.

Now it seems to me that that\'s the three issues we\'re talking about
there. Am I incorrect? If it is, then we could possibly expand this
recommendation, you know, chisel it out a little bit, and make it part
of the report.

MR. STOUT: Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. Ken McEldowney. I guess I would urge that this
particular motion be, I don\'t know, tabled to the end of the
discussion. I think we have already spent almost as much time on
Kathleen\'s suggestion as on all the rest of the recommendations. We\'re
only on No. 3. We\'re in great danger of not being able to reach any
sort of resolution whatsoever on the subcommittee\'s report. And I would
really urge that we wait on the specific motion, go back to having
Claude do the rest of the eight recommendations, make a vote on that,
and then come back to the motion dealing with Kathleen\'s suggestion.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I\'m very supportive of that.

MALE SPEAKER: Here, here.

MR. STOUT: All right. Is that all right with the rest of you? Okay.
Thank you. Is there any more discussion on recommendation No. 3? Hearing
none, I will move on to recommendation No. 4.

We commend the FCC\'s plans to streamline the informal complaints
process. However, we strongly recommend the streamlining address the
following: a) time frames for the resolution of complaints, including
giving consumers and FCC point of contact and expected time frame for
resolution at the time the consumer files the complaint; b) a listing on
the FCC\'s web site of points of contact of all companies licensed or
regulated by the Commission; and c) appropriate lengths to web sites of
other governmental agencies who might also be able to assist the
consumer with a complaint.

Anyone wish to discuss this recommendation further?

MS. ROOKER: Shirley Rooker. I\'d like to make a suggestion on behalf of
Call for Action and other consumer groups that work with consumers on a
daily basis that you also include governmental and other consumer
agencies because there is an awful lot of people out there that work
with consumers all the time, if that would be appropriate.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Susan.

MS. PALMER: We thought that was a great idea, but it wouldn\'t fly
because it\'s too hard to screen out a good agency from a bad one, and
we didn\'t think it would get passed the lawyers.

MR. STOUT: I got you. Okay.

MS. PALMER: But I personally liked it.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Susan.

MR. STOUT: Rich.

MR. ELLIS: While I understand the rationale for wanting to have a single
point of contact for all consumer complaints on a web site, at a company
the size of Verizon, if you had one person or one contact, they would
get overwhelmed and wouldn\'t be able to handle the complaints. There
are probably better ways of handling consumer complaints than having
everything go to one specific person in an organization. So while I
understand the intent of it, I don\'t think it\'s really workable from a
corporate perspective in all cases.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Thank you. Micaela.

MS. TUCKER: I\'d like to echo what Rich brought up, and also bring up
the issue that we at Nokia actually feel very strongly that people who
handle complaints from people with disabilities ought to be specifically
trained in that issue. And because a lot of times resolving complaints
from customers with disabilities a long time in terms of time on the
phone or time communicating, that it be a separate entity that does that
because, for instance, especially in corporations, a lot of focus is put
with other consumer complaints on how quickly complaints are resolved.
And that\'s not the issue in working with consumers with disabilities.

MR. STOUT: Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: Maybe one way to get at the suggestion that Shirley made,
which was other consumer organizations that could be helpful, is ‑- and
I don\'t know if this exists on the FCC web site right now ‑- is point
to the members of this committee since we\'re already in some vetted.
Many of our organizations can provide that service, and we should be
publicly available, and we\'re willing to be so in terms of other
consumer organizations.

Is there a place that all of us and our contact names are on the web
site?

MR. STOUT: Scott, would you respond to that?

MR. MARSHALL: Yes. Scott here. Only the committee members\' names and
organizational affiliations are on the web site. We can certainly change
that if you wish. Currently, we don\'t provide contact information. I
think it was done originally so that you would not be flooded with phone
calls and such. It\'s up to you what we\'d like to do there.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Let Larry be the one contact \--.

MR. STOUT: I\'m sorry. Who was speaking right now? If we can get one
person at a time, please. I\'m sorry. I\'ve recognized Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: I\'ll defer to Rich.

MR. ELLIS: I would just ‑- from my own personal experience, my name is
listed on the FCC\'s web site as the disability contact for Verizon, and
I get numerous e-mails every day from vendors selling things, from just
general ‑- I mean, I get all kinds of complaints and issues that are not
related whatsoever to 255 issues, which is what I\'m supposed to be
there fore. So I would caution the committee, before you put your name
on the web site, think carefully what you are asking for.

FEMALE SPEAKER: That\'s a good point.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Andrea and then Bob, and then me.

MS. WILLIAMS: I would like to second that, Rich. And also, as a trade
association, our members have made it very, very clear to us that they
don\'t want us getting between them and their customers, and would
prefer to deal directly with their customers rather than having their
trade association refer them.

So what we try to do is put the people together, but the Susan Palmers
and the Micaela Tuckers of the world have made it very clear to us they
want to be able to deal with their customers one on one.

MR. STOUT: Bob.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: Bob Chrostowski, TIA. I\'d like to third that comment
from the standpoint of the industry, and that our industry members have
reported that their names appearing on the 255 web site have brought in
numerous calls and complaints, complaints concerning products outside
the scope of the intent of 255, and it\'s generally used by people to
err their frustrations. Maybe you have experienced some of that as well,
Andrea.

So again, I\'d like to just point that ‑- that\'s what is going on.

MR. STOUT: Okay. And I would like to respond to the issue of points of
contact within different companies. The working group, and I for one, we
were pushing for one single contact for each company because it would be
much easier for a consumer to be able to contact a particular person
with a variety of complaints. But we ran into a wall with that.

Companies don\'t necessarily have to give one particular point of
contact. They can give more than one, depending on the area of specialty
that the person has. Perhaps one person ‑- I mean points of contact
focusing on different areas of responsibility.

I think the real issue here is that consumers are fed up with getting
the runaround. They check the web site. They find an e-mail address that
is so general they don\'t know who it is going to and who is handling
consumer complaints. And that\'s frustrating, and they end up giving up,
and they don\'t pursue the appropriate complaints. And we\'d like FCC to
help each company. Again, if they want to have more than one single
point of contact, that\'s fine, but just to make sure that we\'re
sending complaints to the right place and that we have someone to seek
follow-up from.

It would be a great benefit to the consumers because the consumers will
know, okay, who they\'re filing the complaint with, and then they\'re
able to follow up on it. And they can tell the FCC who has been working
with them, if necessary. This would be a way of holding the businesses
accountable and making sure that follow-up is done on complaints.

Some companies do a wonderful follow-up job on complaints. Others do
not. And that\'s where we came from on this issue, on this
recommendation.

Susan and then David.

MS. PALMER: Okay. If the other subcommittee members can correct me if
I\'m wrong here, my recollection on this one was that because we didn\'t
have a demonstrated need, as we did in the later recommendations for
video description and captioning, that we had dropped that section. My
memory may be going, but I seem to remember some discussion on that.

MR. STOUT: No. We dropped that section. Oh, excuse me. We did not.
Pardon me. Diane and then Paul. Oh, excuse me. I\'m sorry, Diane. David,
correct. David, you were next, and then Diane. My apologies.

MR. POEHLMAN: Hi. This is Dave Poehlman with American Council of the
Blind. As I read this, and as I listen to the discussion, what the
wording actually expresses is a single point of contact. Now this single
point of contact can have many meanings, and I have found it much more
efficient to deal with a company that has a single point of contact in
that there are individuals at the other end of that contact point that
are multiple and talented. And that way, if somebody goes on vacation,
you still have a point of contact.

So I support the single point of contact, with the clarity that the
single point of contact might be an office in a company, an organization
within a company, a department within a company, you know, that sort of
thing.

MR. STOUT: One moment. Paul, before I go to you, I want to clarify. I
want to make a clarification here. I never said a single point of
contact for each company. We did not say that. We were talking about the
FCC having a single point of contact for complaints. But when we\'re
talking about companies, they certainly could have more than one point
of contact. That\'s why we used points of contact rather than point of
contact for industry. Paul.

MR. SCHROEDER: Paul Schroeder, Alliance for Public Technology. I was on
the group, and I frankly don\'t remember having an extended discussion
on this recommendation 4(b). But we did have an extensive discussion on
the concept of points of contact, and here is what I suggest.

We say in six that the FCC ‑- we ask the FCC to examine the feasibility
of points of contact in other areas. I move that we drop 4(b) from the
report as it doesn\'t ‑- we\'re not getting ‑- I don\'t think we\'re
ready to take action on that or call for the FCC to take action on that.
So I would move that we drop 4(b), and that I think the discussion is
adequately captured in six.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. STOUT: Okay.

MALE SPEAKER: And if somebody will call the question so we don\'t ‑-

FEMALE SPEAKER: I\'ll call the question.

MR. STOUT: It seems that there is a general consensus on the committee
to drop 4(b). Am I following you right? Would anybody like to express
objection to that idea? So 4(b) is therefore dropped from recommendation
No. 4. Okay. Any further discussion on recommendation No. 4? Seeing
none, let us proceed to recommendation No. 5. Could I have the slide for
No. 5, please?

MR. SCHROEDER: Claude?

MR. STOUT: Oh, I\'m sorry. Sorry, Paul.

MR. SCHROEDER: Paul Schroeder. Just a recommendation. I know it\'s late,
so can we dispense with reading of the recommendation and just say can I
have comments on 5(a) ‑- this is a long one, for one thing -‑ 5(a),
5(b), et cetera? Everyone has seen it, or should have seen it, in
advance.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Following Paul\'s wish, does the committee agree that
we will not be reading the recommendation No. 5? Seeing no objection, we
will follow Paul\'s recommendation. Paul\'s recommendation is approved.
Any further discussion on No. 5? Okay. Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I may be one of two people who don\'t know what CAMS is
and doesn\'t know what mystery shopper is.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Thank you.

(Laughter)

MR. STOUT: Okay.

MS. ROOKER: I know what a mystery shopper is.

MR. STOUT: CAMS?

MS. ROOKER: What are CAMS? I don\'t know.

MR. STOUT: Scott, could you define that for us?

MR. MARSHALL: Scott here. That\'s FCC-ese for consumer advocacy and
mediation specialist. These are the frontline people that take telephone
calls, e-mail complaints, and so forth and act to resolve them.

MS. ROOKER: And a mystery shopper is someone who doesn\'t identify who
they are, but they are checking out to see if the service performs.

MR. STOUT: Okay.

MALE SPEAKER: I\'m sorry. You were asking me that question?

MS. ROOKER: No. I mean, I\'m making a statement. But that\'s what it is.
I mean, it\'s common terminology.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Very good. And, please, when we have rapid discussion
back and forth, I get lost. By the time I have seen who is speaking, I
have missed the next comment. I\'m now recognizing Andrea.

MS. WILLIAMS: I\'d like to make, in addition to recommendation five, not
only increase training interaction with consumer disability communities,
but also with industry in terms of we in the industry know the CAMS are
the first point of contact with our ‑- well, especially with wireless
subscribers. And what we find is sometimes the CAMS may not have the
training or understanding about the industry, and I know we have had
efforts in which we have basically training on what we call wireless 101
so when a customer calls you, and may not be able to give you a brief
description of what is going on ‑- oh, my phone call didn\'t go through.
Well, did it drop? So the CAMS can ask the right questions and can
solicit the information they need that will help the industry to resolve
that, or that company to resolve that issue rather than trying to figure
out, well, what does this complaint say.

You know, you spend a lot of valuable time trying to figure out what in
the world are they asking or complaining about. So I would like to see
increased training and interaction with the consumer, disability
communities and industry.

MR. STOUT: Okay. I\'m sorry. Who seconded that? Bob, okay. Thank you,
Bob.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: Bob Chrostowski, TIA. Regarding item C, I want to tell
you that industry is also concerned somewhat about service access
quality. It has been brought to my attention, for example, part of my
committee work, that there has been a noticeable decline in the number
of registrations under FCC part 68 for telecommunications equipment. And
some of the members of our industry have taken it upon themselves to go
shopping and have noticed that the equipment available on the shelves ‑-
and I would say this might especially be appointed to consumer items ‑-
do not carry the FCC part 68 required registrations and the like.

So we\'re looking at this ourselves. Maybe I\'ll have some more
information on this at the next meeting.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Bob. That\'s an interesting comment.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Shirley?

MS. ROOKER: I\'m sorry. I was just commenting that what Bob was saying
was interesting. Perhaps we should consider that as an agenda item.

MR. STOUT: Okay.

MS. ROOKER: We\'re getting perilously close to time.

MR. STOUT: Let me face the problem of adding ‑- yes, you\'re right,
Shirley, we are. Are there any further problems accepting the
recommendation regarding giving training on the interaction for business
and industry? Part A, in other words. Adding the word \"business,\"
okay.

Okay. Now let\'s move on to recommendation No. 6. Again, I have been
asked not to read the text of the recommendation.

(Pause)

MR. STOUT: Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: This point came up when we were rushing to make some
recommendations at the last meeting, that there is definitely a concern
that the generalized complaint channel at fccinfo@fcc.gov is just not
really equipped to deal with generalized disability access issues, and
in particular ones about captioning description, and that we were really
were hoping that the FCC would consider bringing back the access at
fcc.gov e-mail address that was taken away because it\'s just getting
lost in the mix, these kinds of complaints and issues.

And so I think maybe the recommendation could be more specific about the
e-mail address, as well as if others would like to see this broadened
beyond captioning of video description regarding other disability access
issues.

MS. BURSTEIN: Yes. This is Diane Burstein from the National Cable and
Telecommunications Association. I guess in reviewing this
recommendation, I was wondering, given cable operators at the local
provide all of their customers about information about how to seek
additional information ‑- they have customer service representatives at
the local level. I just wasn\'t sure exactly what this recommendation
was going towards in terms of a single point of contact for resolution
of complaints. There already is a complaint resolution process that has
been set up in the FCC\'s closed captioning rules, and I wasn\'t sure if
this was designed to do something other than what is in the rules today.

MR. STOUT: Okay. I\'d like to respond. The first sentence, where we say
the FCC should require companies to provide a single point of contact
regarding complaints regarding closed captioning or video description,
that would be specifically access for communities who depend on those
services.

Often you\'ll see captioning disappear from a program or words will be
spelled so wrong you cannot decipher what their intent was. And when the
consumers try to contact someone by phone, often there is no one there.
There is no one who answers the complaint. And again, sometimes we\'re
asked to send to a general e-mail address, and we do not know who to
expect to follow up with. So the working group is recommending that
whether it be on the web or perhaps also the TV guide, the point being
that we know with whom to file a complaint regarding problems with
captioning or video description.

Does that clarify?

MS. BURSTEIN: It does to some extent, except that I think under the
FCC\'s procedures that were established in the closed captioning rules,
the first point of contact is the cable operator. And in that instance
‑- I mean, there may be issues with ‑- technical issues with the
captioning not going through, or there may be issues with the particular
program network not being captioned or being exempt from captioning
obligations.

But I guess it would be helpful for me to understand where when you say
that there are issues that have arisen, if it is issues not being able
to contact the local cable operator or who this contact person is, I
guess, that you would want as a single point. And I guess my overarching
comment is is this really a recommendation that the FCC needs to require
at this time, or this is something where the feasibility might be
studied.

MR. STOUT: Well, discussion, further discussion?

MR. CRAFT: I wanted to follow up on Diane\'s comment. This is Roger
Craft speaking. Which companies are you referring to, I\'m wondering,
for TV companies, TV stations, or the captioning companies, or what?
Because the TV stations, in some cities, are required to provide
captioning, and then they often use out of the area companies. So I\'m
thinking perhaps the language here should be a bit more specific and
specify whether it\'s TV stations or caption providers, or third
parties.

MR. STOUT: Well, it depends on the nature of the problem itself. It
could be from the TV station. It could be from the program itself. It
could be from the caption provider. But the point is, once we file a
complaint with a person, we want to know who we should follow up with
the complaint because if we only have that initial general contact, we
tend to get the runaround, and we\'d like to know who all will be
involved in this process.

I think this is a good starting point, though. That\'s what we\'re
asking for. Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: Diane is right that under the FCC rules, there is an
explicit procedure for complaints to be filed for captioning rules in
particular, but description travels pretty closely with them. And
you\'re supposed to file your complaint first with the company, whether
it\'s cable or otherwise. But I think the problem that Claude might be
point out is who or where at the company is this complaint supposed to
be filed.

I don\'t know if the FCC rules are that explicit. Even, Diane, if you
say the local cable company, but, you know, what does that mean, where
consumers don\'t really don\'t even know where or who might be the
person under those explicit FCC complaint procedures.

MS. ROOKER: Excuse me. I\'m going to have to interrupt.

MR. STOUT: Okay.

MS. ROOKER: Could we take a break now for lunch and come back at quarter
of 1:00? And we\'ll spend ‑- I mean, excuse me, come back at quarter of
2:00, and we\'ll spend 15 minutes until 2 o\'clock finalizing the
recommendations on this working group, if that\'s agreeable with
everyone. Okay? It means grab a fast lunch.

Those of you, you public numbers, you can use the cafeteria for lunch.
We do have lunch provided for the committee members. But the cafeteria
is on what floor, Scott?

MR. MARSHALL: The courtyard level, there are two cafeterias, which is
one floor up from this level.

MS. ROOKER: At quarter of 2:00, please.

(Whereupon, at 1:10 p.m., a luncheon recess was taken.)

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[A F T E R N O O N S E S S I O N]{.underline}

(1:45 p.m.)

MS. ROOKER: Could we encourage everyone to come back to the table
because we have got a very busy agenda?

(Pause)

MS. ROOKER: Okay. We\'re coming back to work. If I could get your
attention, please. I know lunch time is too short. What do you want,
Rich? I can hear you. Oh, thank you. You\'re the only one.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Wait a second. I\'m listening, too.

MS. ROOKER: No, you\'re not, Ken. You\'re here, but you\'re not
listening. Okay. If we could return, please, to the business at hand.
I\'d like to turn the floor back over to Claude. We would like to resume
with the working group, Claude\'s working group. Claude, let\'s go for
it. Thank you. I\'m sorry that we had to interrupt you.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Now before we broke for lunch, we were still discussing
recommendation No. 6. So I believe, if I remember correctly, we were
talking about four and four six, four being trapped regarding the
decision on 4(b). I\'m sorry.

Right now we\'re discussing recommendation No. 6. No. 6 seems to fit
well with what we decided on recommendation No. 4. Joe?

MR. GORDON: In recommendation No. ‑- Joe Gordon, League for Hard of
Hearing. In No. 6, is it possible or doable to insert a paragraph saying
the FCC should ask the network and cable channels to examine their ‑- or
to go through their program logs and advise the FCC which programs are
closed captioning as of January 1, 2002, i.e., 50 percent requirement?

MR. STOUT: Okay, Joe. This is Claude speaking. I think actually Joe\'s
point is not related to recommendation No. 6. I believe that would be a
separate issue. So perhaps if you will propose it later, after our work
group discussion.

MR. GORDON: All right. The only reason I did that is because in the
first paragraph you are talking about compliance of captioning of video,
and this would help the FCC know whether a complaint is valid or not.
Many times people complain this program is not captioned, and it
doesn\'t have to be captioned because that channel has reached their 50
percent or more of compliance. But I\'ll try to bring it up later.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Further discussion?

MS. ROOKER: Could we go back to address ‑- I just wanted to address the
issue that had been brought up before about the single point of contact.
Is that not a concern for people to have one name up there? I thought
that was the issue we discussed, and it was not a person, but it was
going to be an office. But here, the recommendation is making it an
individual. Should that not be changed to a point of contact rather than
an individual?

I think, Rich, you raised that point before.

MR. ELLIS: Clarification. The single point of contact for consumers to
contact or for the FCC to contact?

MR. STOUT: For consumers to contact. Susan and then Larry.

MS. PALMER: I think the parallel here that was drawn was this was more
similar to 255. So the issue is very specific. So it was appropriate to
have a single point of contact. I mean, we could put name or names, but
similar to 255 rather than a general complaint line, so it\'s okay.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I\'m definitely all in favor of finding a streamlined way
to try to chase down so many of these problems. And talking to my
colleagues at cable and broadcasting, the problem is that finding where
the problem resides is so hard. It can be at the local broadcast level,
the local cable, the national network. So there really isn\'t a single
point of contact anywhere. There would have to be multiple points. And I
think Diane will tell you in some areas, you could say general manager
generically on the local level. But it is difficult to chase it down.
And so you really need, when you have a problem or complaint, to find a
way to address it to multiple points.

MR. STOUT: Actually, I believe Rich had his hand up first, and then you,
Diane. Oh, Diane did. Diane?

MS. BURSTEIN: Thank you. I was just going to follow up and say again, at
the local cable system, my assumption is that you would call the
customer service representative, I mean, if you have an issue with
captions not showing up at a particular point in time. And I guess is
that a single point of contact that you would think of?

MR. STOUT: Yes, right. Well, not only do we want a single point of
contact, we want the name of an individual that we would know who would
be going on to handle it, who would become involved so that if we don\'t
hear from that person in a while, we can go back to that individual and
say, so what is the follow-up on my complaint? How are you going to be
resolving it?

If we have only a general point of contact, how are we going to know
what has become of our complaint? Micaela?

MS. TUCKER: Before I start ‑- Rich, am I interrupting your turn? Okay. I
think that maybe what my fellow industry representatives will say is it
might be helpful for the FCC in clarifying the complaint process with
consumers to stress to them the importance of getting the name of the
person they deal with at the point of contact for customer care at the
company. And the reason is this. Even when I get a section 255 inquiry
or complaint directly from a consumer, if the complaint is about
customer care at Nokia, there is almost nothing I can do if I don\'t
have the name of the person that they originally talked to. And if they
did have that name, they could go back to customer care to follow up and
would be given that person.

So when I get somebody saying, look, I\'m calling because I already
called customer care and my complaint wasn\'t resolved. If I can\'t go
back to that person, I can\'t verify that this person had called in the
first place. I can\'t see what had been done, if there has been any
progress. All I can do is send out a general message.

So maybe part of this is clarifying in the complaint process and in
helping consumers understand what they need to do and whether what
they\'re doing is an inquiry or a complaint. Also telling them the
importance of knowing who they\'re talking to at the customer care
level.

And, Diane, I think that I\'ve called my local customer ‑- I mean my
local cable company, and that\'s what I do if I want to follow up again.

MR. KALTENBACH: Matt Kaltenbach, Sony Ericsson to follow up on
Micaela\'s point. I think it\'s important ‑-

MR. STOUT: Hold on one second. I believe Susan was first.

MS. PALMER: I have a question since I\'m not in the cable area. Do most
cable companies have either a TTY line and people trained or people in
their customer care trained to take TRS calls? I\'m not sure what the
standard practice is. And most of them require an IVR because if there
is an IVR interface, then you have just blocked out contact. So I\'m
just not sure of what the experience is. It might be all taken care of.
You might have a national center like we do for our company, but I was
just curious.

MS. BURSTEIN: I\'m sorry. I really don\'t know the answer to that. I\'ll
have to look into that.

MR. STOUT: Okay. Matt.

MR. KALTENBACH: Thank you, Claude. To follow up on Micaela\'s point, I
think it\'s important not just to be able keep contact information for
customer service or where the incoming complaint occurs, but for the
entire chain where that complaint has gone. And I\'m pointing back to
some letters that we were sent where an actual complaint got filed with
the FCC, but we never really were notified that a complaint had
occurred. And when we followed the chain of contacts where that person
had gone, we actually had to backtrack to determine what all of the
issues were and then just solve the problem, which is always very
straightforward, and it\'s a relatively straightforward process if
you\'ve ever been through it.

But I think the point that Micaela made was I think we should forward a
recommendation that the point of contact and/or the entry point of that
complaint into the process, which was the consumer representative, needs
to be captured. And I\'d like to expand that to say that for that
complaint process, the entire chain of contacts should be maintained so
that you can go back and look at the process and who was contacted and
try to resolve it, and then educate not just your initial service
representative, but the chain of command to make sure that everyone is
sensitive and participating in resolving these complaints.

MR. STOUT: Yes.

MS. KIRSCH: Hi. It\'s Karen Kirsch from the NAB. With all due respect to
the last statement, that\'s a burden that I think a lot of companies
would not have the resources to handle, to actually list on paper every
time ‑-

MR. KALTENBACH: It\'s the FCC.

MS. KIRSCH: Oh, you\'re talking about the FCC?

MR. KALTENBACH: Yeah.

MS. KIRSCH: Okay. Well, then fine.

(Laughter)

MS. KIRSCH: And that leads to the next point that I was going to make,
is that for local television stations, the general manager handles
complaints of this type, as well as any other programming issues. But I
think that we need to look at the FCC and have them ‑- they have got an
enforcement bureau. They also have a help line, which is supposed to
handle consumer issues. And I think we need to really take a look at
what they\'re doing with the resources that they have in place and turn
this issue not only ‑- not just to them, but ask exactly what they are
doing in this respect.

MR. STOUT: Okay. I\'d like to respond to that. I think that the issue is
a lot of complaints come into the FCC because some companies and
community do not respond to complaints. And I think we need to remember
FCC has limited resources, limited staff for handling complaints in a
timely fashion. I think that if the FCC shakes things up regarding the
formal complaints and informal complaints, perhaps the business
community ‑- now again, some companies are doing a good job; others are
not. And we\'d like to motivate those who are not to do a better job to
get their house in order.

A lot of complaints can be resolved between the consumer and the
industry and the business without the FCC\'s help or intervention. A lot
of complaints would be easily resolved quickly if the companies and the
business community themselves used the appropriate resources. We can\'t
be going to FCC all of the time. FCC does not have the resources to
resolve all of the complaints.

It should be a coordinated effort. We should be working together to help
the FCC rather than going to the FCC all of the time, but you use the
resources that out there more wisely. And I think that would make sure
that consumers are satisfied with the responses that they get.

We have got many consumers who are still waiting for the FCC, but yet
FCC is so overwhelmed with the complaints. If the business community got
their act together, they wouldn\'t have an impact on the FCC. I think
it\'s a burden on all three parties, the consumers, the business
community, and the FCC to work it out together.

MS. ROOKER: Claude, I\'m sorry, but we\'re running ‑- we have got to
move this on because we\'re out of time.

MR. STOUT: Okay.

MS. ROOKER: Is there some way that we can wrap up with recommendation
seven and eight and take a vote?

MR. STOUT: Okay. Certainly. Would anyone like to discuss more of
recommendation No. 6? Seeing no hands up, let\'s move on to
recommendation No. 7. Please read recommendation No. 7. We recommend
that the current complaint forms be reviewed to ensure that they
effectively address specific consumer and disability access issues. Any
discussion on this recommendation? Joe.

MR. GORDON: I would have liked to see ‑- I\'ve never seen a complaint
form. I have never seen a ‑- am I on? I have never seen a complaint
form, and I would assume that a letter or an e-mail or some other way
for a consumer to submit a complaint to the FCC would be accepted. Has
your committee looked at an official complaint form before making this
statement?

MS. ROOKER: Can I make a statement here? Why don\'t we ask ‑- we could
ask Martha if she could bring a complaint form with her. I\'m trying to
move this process along. I\'m sorry. We\'re out of time. Would it be \--

MS. PALMER: Shirley, can I please clarify?

MS. ROOKER: Sure.

MS. PALMER: This had to do with having the FCC review their forms
internally. So what we\'re saying is they look at it and see if it meets
these specific needs from these perspectives. So I don\'t know that we
need to have her bring them in. We just want them to look at it and make
sure it meets the needs.

MS. ROOKER: Okay.

MR. GORDON: I thought it was a consumer form. I\'m sorry.

MR. KALTENBACH: Real small, very small.

MS. ROOKER: Very small because we\'re out of time.

MR. KALTENBACH: All right. I think the issue that we\'re seeing in No. 6
that has been pointed out to me is the fact that this widens the scope
of 255 into captioning and video description service that may not have
been there before. The rest of it looks pretty much like 255, and that
widening of the scope into those services might be something that needs
to be discussed in a separate form.

MS. ROOKER: Are you making a recommendation that No. 6 be removed from
the discussion and the voting? I\'m not sure what your comment is.

MR. KALTENBACH: My comment is that I\'m hearing that the widening of the
scope of 255 into video services, which is part of recommendation
six \--

FEMALE SPEAKER: It\'s not related.

MR. KALTENBACH: No.

MS. ROOKER: No. That isn\'t what they\'re saying.

MR. GOLDBERG: I have a suggestion to help you move this along.

MS. ROOKER: Please. Thank you.

MR. GOLDBERG: This is a different section of the bill, 714, not 255. But
it is also required. Because I don\'t think we want to walk away from
this long, long discussion about complaints without having done
something ‑- that would be unfortunate ‑- I\'d like to bring back to the
original recommendation, and reading something like this: We strongly
recommend that the Commission expands its ongoing outreach efforts to
both consumers and industry to assure a more effective consumer
complaint process.

The details and recommendations, I don\'t think we\'re going to resolve
all of them today. We have the document. But I\'d hate to see us walk
away with no recommendation at all on consumer complaints. A suggestion.

MS. ROOKER: I\'m not sure that there is a lot of disagreement on the
recommendations. Do you feel that way? I mean, I think we have moved
through them, and everybody has been in agreement with everything. It
seems that the comments ‑-

MR. GOLDBERG: Well, the single point of contact definitely was a
problem.

MS. ROOKER: Well, I think that was resolved because ‑- yeah. And the
complaint forms is not really an issue. That\'s an internal review that
we\'re discussing. So, I mean, if you have some reservations, if
everybody else has reservations -‑ I\'m sorry. I don\'t know your name.

MS. KIRSCH: Hi. Karen Kirsch. So a point of clarification. The first
line of recommendation six has been taken out, and there is new wording?

MS. ROOKER: No, no. He was not talking about recommendation No. 6. He
was referring to the introduction to the whole complaint ‑-

MR. GOLDBERG: The whole thing.

MS. ROOKER: ‑- recommendations, which I believe we had changed to make
it stronger, had we not? Yes.

MR. GOLDBERG: More detailed.

MS. ROOKER: Perhaps what we should do, because we have got someone from
the FCC scheduled to come in here, and I\'ve moved her time to 3:30, if
we want to take the time after that, we will have some time. We won\'t
have a whole lot because we have got three members at least that I know
of from the public sector who are here to make comments, and I have to
allow them time.

What is the sense of the committee? I had the feeling that we were
moving towards the ability to vote on this, but now is that the
consensus of the group? Okay. I\'m sorry, Claude, to do this, but I
really have got to expedite it. Can we take recommendation No. 8? Do we
have any problems with that? Can we accept it? I think it\'s a rather
generic, general statement.

Okay. Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: I move the adoption as modified during the discussion.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I second.

MS. ROOKER: Of all eight recommendations?

MR. McELDOWNEY: Of all eight.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. The motion has been made that we accept the eight
recommendations as modified.

FEMALE SPEAKER: I second.

MS. ROOKER: We have a second on that. Do we have a vote?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Call the question.

MS. ROOKER: Call the question, a vote on that. Aye, accepting?

(Chorus of ayes)

MS. ROOKER: The abstaining? Okay. Then it has been accepted. Thank you,
Claude. I\'m sorry to have to do that, but it has really gotten ‑- the
time element has gotten beyond us. Okay. Now we\'re going -‑ and that\'s
an excellent job. I want to thank you all for the thought that you have
put into it. We appreciate that very much, Claude.

Now we\'re going to Micaela Tucker and the disability subcommittee, who
has been hard at work, and I have read their work, and I still don\'t
understand it. So having said that ‑- Micaela knows what I mean. I\'ve
talked to Micaela about this. No. We\'re going to add a glossary for one
thing. She is going to make some comments on it. We want to make it a
little more consumer friendly because some of us here are not as
technical as the rest of you. Thank you, Micaela. You all have done some
good work. You know I didn\'t mean to disparage it.

MS. TUCKER: Thank you very much, Shirley. I do want to apologize and ask
for your patience with some of the technical language that\'s in here.
We are fortunate to have some technical and very experienced people on
our subcommittee. I\'d like to thank them for their input, for their
work, and for their attention to these issues.

I have a few opening remarks, but I do want to say that I will go back
and make a technical definition section or page to put at the front of
this report. And then I\'ll also go back and make every effort I can to
substitute lay language for technical terms when possible. In some
instances, it\'s not possible, but I should be able to capture them in
one way or the other through definitions or changes.

I want to highlight ‑- I will in my opening and closing remarks, and
this is very short. So you\'re not going to be sitting here for too
long. Two of the main issues that come up over and over again.

Nearly every discussion about disability access that I have had in the
past year with this subcommittee and outside of it, there is the
prevailing issue of communication. And we have heard much of that today
from the outreach committee and from other people on this committee.
Consumers are not able to access the information they need, either
through their usual information sources at their point of purchase of
products or services or sometimes even on the Internet.

There is information out there. For instance, the FCC has information,
and also industry web sites have information as well. But existence of
that information is sometimes little known or hard to access or find.
From the industry point of view, manufacturers have complied with
Section 255 and Section 508 in some significant ways. But consumers
don\'t always know about it.

The industry groups, the industry interests need knowledge from
consumers about effective means of communication beyond what is already
in use. Encompassing all of this needs to be an efficient means of
updating information as it changes, and that is often weekly or monthly,
to keep up with the pace of product development and availability.

Some of these issues will be discussed in the subcommittee priorities.
In the meantime, technology continues to emerge that inconsistently
satisfies customer needs, and especially customers with disabilities.
Whatever the reason for it, there is a clear need for an effective mode
of information sharing between regulators, consumers, and product
designers about emerging and especially future technologies while
maintaining the confidentiality necessary to maintain a competitive
marketplace.

The disability subcommittee has had discussions over the preceding year
about disability access and communication needs. And I as the
subcommittee chair have compiled this information. So I hope that
everyone will excuse any omissions. However, the subcommittee has had
plenty of time to review the report. So I\'m not expecting too many
complaints.

The priorities are a combined list of items that were in discussion.
Overall, there were 20 main items that were listed. And we found that
many of them fell under subcategories and in the end came up with top 10
priorities. Those are listed on page 3 of the subcommittee report. And I
won\'t go over them list by list because ultimately they fit under two
categories. One is section 255 issues, and the other is TRS, which means
telecommunication relay service. Anyone want to correct me if I\'m
wrong? That\'s what I thought. So I will go over the items as they fit
under those two workgroup suggestions.

Finally, there are a few that don\'t fit either one of those that maybe
fit for a standards workgroup, or to avoid the use of standards, a
definitions workgroup.

So the first working group that we recommend is a telecommunications
relay service workgroup. And that would include quality assurance
issues, outreach and education for a wide range of constituencies on a
wide range of topics, but especially within our group we hear about the
need for publicity about Speech to Speech, and better access to basic
network functionality, reimbursement to carriers for other means of
communication, such as video or to carriers not following under the
common carrier label. And what that means is that common carriers get
reimbursement for TRS, but when there are other communication companies
who are providing this service that don\'t fit under the definition of
common carrier, they often are not reimbursed. So we\'re asking for the
FCC to review that.

The subcommittee workgroup concerns relevant to section 255 would
include appraising progress up to date on compliance with section 255,
ensuring better access again to basic network functionality under
section 255, improving public awareness of the complaint process, which
we have discussed a lot today, encouraging multimodal access, for
example, voice controlled Internet access, improving access to voice
services, such as interactive voice response systems. Susan mentioned
that today, otherwise known as IVRs. Ensuring emerging technologies
incorporate accessible design and do not push earlier, more accessible
technology out of the market. And we\'ll discuss that as an example
later in this report. And finally, exploring prototype testing schemes,
which will again protect company confidentiality, but provide valuable
user input. And this is a major issue for industry.

The items not falling under either TRS or section 255 include, very
importantly, defining functional equivalence beyond the definition that
is out there now. And part of what was brought up in the subcommittee is
that there is still enough leeway under functional equivalence for, for
instance, procurement agencies as well as for manufacturers, and for
consumers, that often there is not an agreement, and this is a source
for complaints from consumers because what they expect is not what they
get. And if there is a better definition out there, perhaps there would
be more satisfaction from consumers.

Also, creation of common standards or guidelines that allow equipment
manufacturers of both assistive technology and mass market technology to
find common ground rather than waiting until something is mandated or
until something is already out in the market and there is
incompatibility. And finally, investigate and potentially define a,
quote, \"handicap disability signaling standard.\" And this was, I
think, a brainstormed idea from the subcommittee that perhaps for those
who want it, there could be a presignal to a communications line that
would indicate this is a TTY call coming, or this a relay call coming to
you without having to, say, pick up the phone, have a hearing person
pick up the phone, hear the TTY tone, put the phone on the TTY, then
start the communication, if there is a presignaling possibility.

So there has been to date progress on many of these issues. As I
mentioned, the workgroup earlier has already dealt with some complaint
issues. In the November 30th meeting, there was a review of the first
five years of section ‑- I mean of the Telecommunications Act, and that
included some comments on section 255. And there was an STS
presentation. I believe that was done in March by Bob Segalman with much
acclaim, and we hope that there will be further support and promotion of
STS.

As it was mentioned this morning by Rebecca, there are not enough people
out there who use STS. However, the need is crucial. The need is
incredible for people to know about it and to use it. We support the
recommendations made by the complaints and outreach group, and also feel
that 711 service is a significant step forward for people to be able to
access relay.

We do still feel that there has not been a formal review of section 255,
and that that is needed, but questions remain in our subcommittee about
how that would happen, who would do such a review, what the scope would
be. For instance, should the market monitoring report be brought up
again? Should it be reestablished? Or is there another effective way of
distributing the information? And again ‑- and this is really important
for us ‑- considering the fact that the information changes on a weekly
or monthly basis, and not knowing at what point to freeze the progress
or to freeze the market to make an assessment, and then to publish that
information, knowing that it will in some ways be already out of date.

So our subcommittee, I think, in terms of actionable items, there are
two things. One, we\'d like to go ahead and start the workgroups on the
telecommunications relay service and the section 255 workgroup to
investigate some of these issues and make recommendations. And then,
two, and very important, too, our progress, I think, as a subcommittee
as well as potentially as a committee as a whole needs clarification
from the FCC on certain questions.

Those questions include what kind of authority the FCC has. For
instance, does the FCC have authority to enable better and more
confidential collaboration between consumers and manufacturer
researchers, or is that out of the scope and should that be sought
elsewhere? What is the current status jurisdiction over the Internet?
Does the FCC perceive that that jurisdiction would change and what would
be the scope?

I\'ll interrupt the rest of the questions to help you understand why
we\'re asking such questions and why they\'re so crucial. People have
said, well, you\'re a committee. Go ahead and make the recommendations.
We\'ll pose them to the FCC, and then we\'ll see what happens.

For our group specifically, it takes a lot of time and effort to discuss
these issues and to come up with recommendations. It\'s not a matter of,
hey, we get on a phone, and we say, let\'s do this. For us to discuss a
recommendation and come up with a final recommendation is pointless if
we\'re discussing things about which the FCC has no authority at all,
that won\'t be taken up. So we\'d like to clarify these issues so that
we know how to move forward.

So to finish up with the questions, we want to know how the FCC can act
to ensure that new technology improvements do not remove accessibility
features for people who depend on them. And specifically, this example
that I promised, for instance, voice recognition software has, quote,
\"moved forward,\" in that it\'s becoming speaker independent. However,
if the speaker dependence completely drops out of those functions, then
the voice recognition is no longer trainable. So people, for instance,
who have speech disabilities who cannot train voice recognition systems
all of the sudden have no access to many of the communications device
that they had access to previously.

There are already several technologies, software packages, and products
that have dropped out of the market, making it very difficult for people
with speech disabilities to, for instance, use their personal computers
or use household items that rely on voice recognition technology.

Also, we\'d like clarification on what type of access issues concerning
specifically Blue Tooth technology is under FCC authority. Does the FCC
have authority to recommend or call for standards making? And again,
going back to funding, as the subcommittee suggests ideas about how to
improve awareness of disability related issues and other outreach or
potential solutions, what sort of funding possibilities are there? And
we\'d like to know that so that with the resources that we have as a
subcommittee, we know that there is a possibility or a probability that
there will be no funding for this, and that this ought to be, for
instance, an industry solution and not something to recommend to the
FCC.

Finally, I want to close with an issue that has emerged for many
manufacturers as accessibility regulations and standards expand to
Europe and Asia and as current U.S. regulations extend to, for instance,
telecom operators in Latin America that have U.S. partnerships or U.S.
parent companies.

It is in the best interests of everyone that accessibility requirements
and standards are similar across national and regional boundaries. Not
only does this reduce manufacturing costs and product costs, but more
importantly, it also ensures that consumers can expect the same level
and type of accessibility wherever they go.

The United States has served as leader in accessibility standards before
when the ADA came out and the Architectural and Transportation Board
came up with architectural and transportation standards. There is an
immediate opportunity now for U.S. regulators, consumers, and
manufacturers to lead again in this area, and there is not much time for
us to wait.

Currently, Europe is coming up with regulations on equipment, and Latin
America actually, without even needing regulations, is now implementing
some accessibility because of their relationships with U.S. companies.
So it is really incumbent upon us to look at those issues.

I\'d like to open up the floor to discussion and questions. I understand
that I\'ve gone through this relatively quickly. But there you have it.
Are there any discussions or recommendations, specifically on the two
issues, one, to form the working group, and two, to ask the FCC to
answer these questions? Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: Sometimes when we refer to section 255, we take that to
mean all the access provisions of the telecom act. But there is the
other section that we have wanted to address and have many times, and
that\'s ‑- I believe it is 714. It\'s the caption and description ones.
And they\'re not all resolved. Even captioning on Monday, July 1st, the
digital television caption rules go into effect. And I\'m sure our hands
are going to be full of compliance issues there, and we\'re still
struggling to comply with description ones.

So I wonder whether the section 255 committee on issues could include ‑-
and someone is going to have to correct me if it\'s 714 ‑- 713? Which is
the other parts of the telecom act that deal with accessibility.

MS. TUCKER: Is there discussion or objection to Larry\'s suggestion that
we add section 713 to this section 255 subcommittee? I mean, not
subcommittee. Excuse me. Working group. So all in favor, say \"aye.\"

(Chorus of ayes)

MS. TUCKER: Aye. Claude? Oh, sorry, sorry. Is there any objection to any
of the recommendations that we have posed? Are there any questions of
clarification? Nanci.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: I don\'t know if this goes back to functional
equivalence, but it has to do with the issue of interoperability. And
this is more for captioning \--

MS. TUCKER: Can we get a mike?

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: Okay. Is it on? My question has to do with if
functional equivalence includes the issue of interoperability as it
pertains to captions. I do know ‑- I\'ll give you a for instance in Los
Angeles when \"West Wing\" was shot in high definition, and it was on an
Adelphia cable network, and it\'s an NBC show. The captions were not
present. And there is a question of who it goes back to, who is
responsible, or how do we make sure that as all of these technologies
emerge, that they are capable of having this interoperability.

Now is that functional equivalence or not? I don\'t know. I just want
to \--

MS. TUCKER: I think it doesn\'t belong to the definition of functional
equivalence as it defined currently. I do believe that interoperability
is covered by section 255, but I\'m not sure. Are there lawyers in the
room who could correct me? We\'ll look into that. And that could be
actually part of the working group task.

Okay. So it sounds as if we are in agreement about the recommendations.
All in favor, say \"aye.\"

(Chorus of ayes)

MS. TUCKER: Any against?

(No response)

MS. TUCKER: Any abstentions?

(No response)

MS. TUCKER: Okay, Shirley. I think we\'re done.

MALE SPEAKER: Let\'s have a hand for us.

(Applause)

MS. ROOKER: I\'m speechless. I am totally speechless. Who has ever known
me to be without ‑- yeah, right.

What I wanted to ask you was about the working groups. Are you planning
on setting up two working groups? I mean, that\'s fine. I think that\'s
an excellent idea. You\'re going to establish those, I take it, right
away since the committee seems to feel that\'s a good idea.

MS. TUCKER: Those would be established right away. They would be,
obviously, open to anyone who is a member of the subcommittee or the
public. Participation through the e-mail list would continue unless
there are any objections. That\'s laid out in the report. But we would
operate through the C/DTAC disability e-mail list. Are there any
objections to that?

MS. ROOKER: Is that acceptable?

MS. TUCKER: Is that acceptable under FACA rules?

MS. ROOKER: I can tell you this is a very active e-mail list.

MS. TUCKER: Yes.

MS. ROOKER: Very active.

MS. TUCKER: I believe that there is a hand raised from Paul.

MR. SCHROEDER: Paul Schroeder, APT. I missed it if you said it. Where
will the captioning and description issues be put?

MS. TUCKER: Those will be under ‑- it will now be called the section 255
and section 713 workgroup. And that will encompass the video and
captioning.

MR. SCHROEDER: Okay. Thanks.

MS. ROOKER: Do you think that you\'ll be able to have a product of that
workgroup for our November meeting?

MS. TUCKER: I do indeed think that we will be able to have a product of
that workgroup. And I will also say to those people who are already just
trying to decide which workgroup they will be in, I will not be the
chair of either of those workgroups. So start fighting amongst
yourselves. I will be the chair of the subcommittee still and will be
happy to moderate and make sure that ideas are captured. However, I will
not be the chair of the workgroups. Ron.

MR. BARNES: Ron Barnes with CTIA. The individual issues within each of
the workgroups that you talked about will be discussed in the
workgroups, and then they\'ll be brought back to this committee for a
larger discussion of the items that this committee ‑- or the workgroups
develop. Is that \--

MS. TUCKER: Yes. Under our charter, the subcommittees and any workgroups
thereof cannot make recommendations directly. They have to be brought to
the committee, and then the committee either accepts or rejects and
makes recommendations itself.

MR. BARNES: So the opportunity for discussion of individual items will
come at the November meeting?

MS. TUCKER: Absolutely.

MR. BARNES: Okay. Thank you.

MS. TUCKER: Jim.

MR. TOBIAS: Pertinent to that, I think all of us who watch the e-mail
traffic go back and forth on those specific items must recognize that in
some cases there is a good deal of specificity and a good deal of an
indication of an action that we want the Commission to take.

However, in some of the items, that is still lacking. So I would move if
necessary that the subcommittee charge the working groups with the
development of specific action items for the Commission to take based on
the issues that are mentioned in that list.

MS. TUCKER: So done. Any objections?

(No response)

MS. TUCKER: Okay.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Well, do we have any other further discussions?

MR. TOBIAS: I don\'t know if this is out of order, but this does relate
to the disability subcommittee, and it relates to a discussion that we
had during the session, the general session, that was about the
universal service fund. There had been discussion earlier of having a
disability component added to the universal service program, and I
understand there was some history to this, that during the debate over
the telecom act, there was in fact an attempt to add such a disability
component that failed.

What I would like to propose in the form of a motion is that the
committee strongly support the development of a disability component of
the universal service program. And even though it has no force of law
even if the Commission were to adopt it, it would still require new
legislation. It would at least contribute to a paper trail the next time
that this issue comes up for legislative review. And I don\'t know if
it\'s out of order to ask the committee to accept this right now, but
I\'m going to offer it in the form of a motion that the committee
strongly supports the development of a disability component of the
universal service program.

MS. ROOKER: I don\'t know about the rest of you, but I\'m not sure I
understand what that means. So I think before we could accept ‑-

MR. TOBIAS: Oh, you know what it means. I mean, it\'s simple.

MS. ROOKER: It is?

MR. TOBIAS: Just vote for it.

MS. ROOKER: Right.

MR. TOBIAS: How far wrong could you go, Shirley?

MS. ROOKER: Oh, I don\'t know. I don\'t know.

MR. TOBIAS: Would you like me to explain the motion?

MS. ROOKER: Yeah.

MR. TOBIAS: Well, many of the items that were under discussion in the
subcommittee had to do with funding. We have talked a lot about funding
of outreach efforts, that states have a requirement to do outreach, but
there is a perception, at least in some states, that there is not a
sufficient dedication to the cause of outreach. And yet if the
Commission were on its own to add certain outreach performance
requirements, let\'s say, as part of TRS certification, that that might
be considered burdensome by some states and might be objected to.

We have similar issues with respect to equipment distribution. As you
may know, there is about half of the states in the country that give out
TTYS and in some cases other communication equipment expressly for the
use of people with disabilities. However, the coverage obviously is not
the same in all of the states, even the states that have those programs.
So there is something of an unequal protection in a sense with respect
to equipment distribution programs. The same issue comes up of, well,
how can we fund these programs.

And at a sort of larger level, larger, more abstract level, the original
concept behind the universal service has moved from, you know, kind of a
purely geographic, let\'s make sure that rural customers are served, and
has included now people with lower income, people who were otherwise
geographically or for other reasons excluded from participation. And I
think not just those of us in the disability subcommittee, but this
whole committee as a whole would recognize that people with disabilities
are one of those categories. Yet there has never been within the
legislation in the universal service fund a statement to that effect.

You know, I think that there are numerous opportunities for writing
specifics as to what would be funded under that program. I don\'t intend
to propose that now. I do intend to propose that it be added to the
docket, as it were, when universal service fund legislation comes up
again. I gave you some examples of kinds of programs that could be
funded. I think they\'re analogous in many ways to some of the
geographical and income related measures that exist already. And I\'m
certainly happy to hear discussion about it from others who questioned
what specifically I was proposing.

Susan has asked me to reread it. The committee strongly supports the
development of a disability component of the universal service program.
And again, we\'re just putting ourselves as a committee on record. The
commissioners will recognize that we have done so. But there is really
no net effect, aside from having established that as a record.

MS. ROOKER: Rich.

MR. ELLIS: I\'d like to weigh in as somebody who has been involved a
little bit with universal service. There are a million issues involved
here, and I\'d be really concerned about us, with our limited knowledge
of this, weighing in so strongly. I would recommend that ‑- I\'d like to
propose we change your motion to say we support the Commission study or
review or something, just to put on the Commission\'s radar screen, as
opposed to putting a stake in the ground saying we support it because we
don\'t know enough about the issues to really make that recommendation.

MS. ROOKER: Was that acceptable to you, Jim?

MR. TOBIAS: Well, not without knowing what all of these complicated
issues are. I mean, we did have a presentation on universal service
fund. And I understand there is accounting problems and what have you.
And in no way do I want to portray this as a zero sum game, that, you
know, whatever existing programs have to get taxed in order to fund this
new component. I know that that poses an additional problem for carriers
because it essentially means an additional burden. And I\'m cognizant of
that, but I really don\'t want to retract it to the point of, you know,
encouraging the Commission to study it.

I think we might have two parts of this, one that says that urge the
Commission to study it, to study the feasibility, to study what the
funding requirements might be for a number of specific programs. But
I\'d rather as the consumer and disability committee take a stand in
favor of it rather than just a study of it.

MS. ROOKER: Susan.

MS. PALMER: I share Rich\'s concerns in that it\'s too broad. From that
statement, you could say does that mean that people with disabilities
have a higher income level to qualify. I mean, it could be ‑- is
equipment involved? I mean, there are just so many things that could be
covered with that that I would feel uncomfortable with, you know, giving
blanket approval because that could be interpreted 100 different ways.

MS. ROOKER: Is this something that we would want to discuss further? Do
you think it deserves perhaps a working group to take a look at it,
composed of the various interests around the table? I mean, I personally
don\'t know that much about what he is talking about, and I certainly
would want more information. But that\'s a personal opinion. Joe.

MR. GORDON: Shirley, if I understand what Jim is talking about, in the
state of Florida, they do give telephone assistive equipment to all
consumers that need it if they\'re qualified without any means test. In
the state of New York, we have a bill called TANY, T‑A‑N‑Y, telephone
access for all New Yorkers. It has been passed by the assembly ‑- I
don\'t know what the senate is doing with it now ‑- which would also
give assistive telephone equipment for New Yorkers that need it, but
with a means test. Florida has no means test. New York is considering
one with a means test.

So maybe ‑- I like what Jim is proposing. But maybe the subcommittee
should see what states have at the moment some with a means test, some
without a means test, what the equipment is, and then come back with a
committee report.

MS. ROOKER: Well, obviously we\'re talking about a very complex issue
here. We may be trying to put it into a simple dimension, but I don\'t
think it\'s going to work. I\'d like to make the suggestion that we form
a working group to take a look at this issue, and that we discuss it as
part of our November agenda items. How does that set with people? Paul?

MR. SCHROEDER: Paul Schroeder. I would think the subcommittee on
affordable access available telecom could and should take this up, if
that\'s appropriate.

MS. ROOKER: Who is the chair of that committee?

MALE SPEAKER: Andrea?

MS. ROOKER: Andrea. She has left. I don\'t know. I\'m not sure but what
there are other interests around the table also that would like to talk
about it. So perhaps we should approach Andrea and ask her if she is
willing to spearhead the effort. Would that be productive?

I don\'t want to close off discussion on it, but I feel like there needs
to be some effort put into it so that we know where we\'re coming from.
Mike?

MR. DelCASINO: This is Mike DelCasino. I guess I have to confess that
I\'m a little confused at this point. My understanding of universal
service was to provide ‑- and please correct me if I\'m wrong ‑- but was
to provide service to rural America and access to schools and libraries
and that sort of thing.

Now I\'m hearing what sounds to me like lifeline kinds of issues and
things like that. It sounds like we\'re crossing a lot of lines. And I
guess I\'m beginning now to lean towards the notion that this is a very
complex issue that Rich and Susan mentioned. It\'s a very complex issue,
and we really need to step back and look at it. And maybe we need to
look at it in light of affordability and how it fits in with lifeline
and link-up and the TRS fund and all of those other things that play in
this game.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Thank you, Mike. David?

MR. POEHLMAN: This is Dave Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. Excuse me. I\'ve had a big lunch. Yeah. This is the first time
I\'ve done that today. I apologize. I usually make everybody laugh every
time I speak. But I apologize for not doing that before.

I just want to clarify what I see to be universal service. Universal
service has to do with anything that requires a level playing field that
needs help in obtaining that level playing field with regard to
telephone services. So, you know, for example, you know, all the things
that are mentioned, plus I think fee free directory assistance can
qualify under certain circumstances as part of universal service,
activity, you know, availability activity. And there are a number of
aspects to this.

And I think that asking or noting that we support an effort by the
Commission to direct this is not ‑- you know, is not a bad thing. I\'m
not opposed to forming a working group. But I think the working group
will come up with the same conclusion.

I think there are precedents for this already. We have the library act
now, where we\'re asking that the libraries who are receiving ‑-
libraries in schools I think it is ‑- who are receiving universal
service funds to help them with setting up their network infrastructures
follow the requirements of the ADA. And, you know, I see a number of
possibilities in this. So that\'s my take on it. And I would welcome the
opportunity to work with it, but I don\'t see it as a very large issue
for the committee right now.

It might become a larger issue when it goes up through the process, and
then we have to decide, well, what exactly do we want to have it include
as far as services. But, you know, I see this as helping to provide
braille bills or helping to provide accessible documentation from
services, all kinds of very interesting and worthwhile things that in
some instances is not there partly because the rationale is that the
funding is not available or it would cost too much.

MS. ROOKER: Your comments are well taken, David. Susan.

MS. PALMER: I think this goes back to the bigger issue of funding. How
do we get equipment or services in the hands of people who need it? So I
would strongly support having a working group to look at affordability
and issues, and then specifically to look at universal services, one
aspect of that.

I think it is a complex issue. There is statement involvement. There are
certain requirements by law. But there may be other avenues or things
that we haven\'t considered, and I think it\'s worth putting time and
effort into it.

MS. ROOKER: Do we have any volunteers who\'d like to serve on this
working group? David, okay. Jim, Susan. Let me see. We have got Kate
Dean, Mike DelCasino, Matt Kaltenbach. And I\'m sorry. Kaltenbach. I\'m
sorry.

MR. CRAFT: Roger Craft.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Roger. Roger Craft. Have we got all those? Did I
say everybody\'s name?

MR. MARSHALL: You might want to read them back.

MS. ROOKER: I\'ve got David. Okay. Can you read them back? We\'re
getting the feedback here.

MR. MARSHALL: I\'m having a technological burp here. Hold on one second.

(Pause)

MS. ROOKER: Huh? He\'s not pressing the right button. Get out, Scott.

MR. MARSHALL: I am pressing the right button, but it\'s not cooperating
with me.

MS. ROOKER: The button is not cooperating. We have got a button. Well,
let\'s just go over that again, and I\'ll write them down. Sure. We have
got David, Jim, Susan. Paul, were you on this? Did you have your hand
up? You did not. Oh, Paul, you declined. All right. Kate had her hand
up. Who else down there. Mike, Matt, and Roger. Did I get everybody.
Hey, is that from memory or what.

MR. MARSHALL: Talk about low tech coming to the rescue.

MS. ROOKER: You\'ve got it. And Jim thinks he can read my writing. Ha.
He can\'t read either. Okay. You think I don\'t know who these people
are? You\'re probably right. Okay. All right. Then we\'ll form a working
group. Paul? Okay. So we\'ll form a working group to study this issue. I
think we out of courtesy should let Andrea Williams know since she is
the chair of the accessibilities working group. So why don\'t we just
put her up -‑ pardon me? Affordability. Excuse me. Why don\'t we just
put her on that? We\'ll ask her if she is willing to serve, and let you
all decide who is going to chair the working group. All right? Sounds
fair to me. I like the democratic process. Okay. David?

MR. POEHLMAN: Are we ‑- I\'m sorry. Paul was next.

MR. SCHROEDER: If you\'re on this topic, I\'ll cede my \--

MR. POEHLMAN: No.

MR. SCHROEDER: Okay. Because I\'m changing topics.

MS. ROOKER: Okay.

MR. POEHLMAN: So am I.

MR. SCHROEDER: Oh, dear. Two points for the disability subgroup to ask
‑- subcommittee to ask whether these are appropriate for consideration.
One is the ‑- I believe it\'s a federal advisory committee. In any
event, the titled the council, the Media Security and Reliability
Council, that the FCC formed, I believe fairly recently.

I\'m bringing it up because this council was supposed to look at, among
other things, the broadcast and dissemination of emergency information
through the media regulated by the FCC. And I don\'t know what kind of
disability representation was originally included in the council. I
think there is some now. AFB I know has been approached to join.

I raise it for two reasons. One is it may be something that the
committee should take a specific look at because of the importance of
the issues, obviously. And number two, more broadly, to raise
consideration of how disability and I suppose other consumer groups ‑-
this question has come up before here ‑- are in general linked into
these kinds of FCC proceedings, where it might not originally ‑-
consumer and disability groups might not originally be approached to be
part of these activities.

That\'s my first point. The second one is again a dicey area, but
obviously there is a whole lot of milieu on broadband commands, which
may or may not have impact on section 255. And so I\'m remiss for not
raising these to the working group, but I will raise them to the working
group because I think it\'s an issue that we need again to take a
serious look at how this committee can in fact be a useful advisor to
the Commission on the impact of that issue, which does not appear ‑- the
disability-related impact, and there may be others, do not appear to be
given a whole lot of weight here in this building.

MS. ROOKER: Micaela.

MS. TUCKER: I just want to comment to Paul that there were a few
questions along those lines that were raised at previous meetings, and
we haven\'t yet received a comment back from the FCC. So I\'ll bring
those up in the workgroup, and we\'ll ask for a comment again, either
directly to Scott, see if he could follow up, or at the next meeting.

MR. SCHROEDER: Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Do we have another hand here? Okay. David, you\'re in
line.

MR. POEHLMAN: Hi. This is David Poehlman of the American Council of the
Blind again. I have two stones to throw here. Let\'s see.

MS. ROOKER: Duck.

MR. POEHLMAN: One of them is I\'d like to see ‑- well, I\'d like to see
us address some issues that I don\'t think are covered in here so far
with our disability access stuff and possibly some other broader issues
for the committee. One of them is the new standards for cable television
that are emerging. Specifically, I have in mind the open cable access
protocol, which has some issues that are partly relevant to consumer
choice and partly relevant to ‑- potentially relevant to accessibility
in that the consumer choice aspect seems to be that manufacturers might
not be able to produce the kinds of CPE, if you will, or customer
premises equipment in this case, or consumer television set top boxes,
that the consumer might want to choose to bring into their home.

For example, it might not be possible to produce a cable-ready
television set once the open cable standards are put in place and
digital cable moves forward. And accessibility issues come into play
because of ‑- and also the choice issue ‑- because of a security aspect,
which right now is built around, you know, being delivered in the box,
but could possibly be modularized so that it could be put onto a card,
which could then be inserted into the CEA ‑- I mean the CE product,
consumer equipment product, and still have the standards compliance
specification written around it and also be accessible.

I\'ve been doing a lot of research on this. I posted some stuff on the
disability subcommittee working group list, to which a lot of people go,
wow, what is that. And so I\'d like for us to be proactive as a
committee or in some way get involved at a relatively early level to see
where we are with this, what can we do to help FCC, what FCC is doing
with this, you know, that kind of thing. So that\'s the issue I have.
And I think I have another one, but I don\'t know what it is right now,
so I\'ll rest.

MS. ROOKER: Yeah. Well, you let us know when you wake up there, David,
and figure out that other one. Okay. Now are you making a suggestion
here that we include this as a discussion item on the agenda, that it be
subject to study by the accessibility subcommittee? Or where are you
doing with these comments?

MR. POEHLMAN: Well, it\'s not just an accessibility subcommittee issue.

MS. ROOKER: Okay.

MR. POEHLMAN: It\'s an issue for affordability, accessibility, and if
universal access ever strays over beyond telephone systems into
Internet, VOIP, TV, things like that, then it will go into
affordability.

That does bring to mind the other issue, though, which closely
parallels. VOIP has not been mentioned as ‑- maybe it\'s part of the
emerging technology portion. But right now, there are an awful lot of
systems that if they employ ‑- there are systems that are going in as
voice-over Internet protocol, VOIP, that are not hearing-aid compatible.
So I can get you some case studies that are pretty weird, like one day a
library system put in VOIP. Up to that day, their hearing aid ‑-
customers using a hearing aid could call them up and talk to them. After
that, they couldn\'t.

So this is a very interesting issue. We\'re discovering in some of the
other lines of research that I\'m doing.

But the answer to your question, Shirley, is I would like to have the
committee explore the issue. And I\'m not sure what fashion it could be
taken up in. I\'d like for us to discuss maybe that. But perhaps put it
on the agenda for a future meeting, maybe get some talent in here to
talk about it, or get some working stuff around it, or maybe find out
that it\'s just a wasted dust of wind here. But I think there is some
merit to this based on the information that I have been able to gather
and receive. And there are others that I know of who I have talked to
who have information, and if they would feel free to comment and discuss
it, that would be good, too.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Does anyone have any comments or thoughts on this, or
should we look into it and see if we feel that it\'s an agenda item?
Larry?

MR. GOLDBERG: This is Larry Goldberg. Unfortunately, Diane Burstein,
from the National Cable Television, is gone. But her organization has a
lot of information on the issues that David is bringing up. And perhaps
she could be invited to bring someone to the next meeting to talk about
the impacts this next generation of cable could have on consumer and
disability issues.

MS. ROOKER: That\'s a fabulous suggestion. What is her last name?
Diane \--

MR. GOLDBERG: Burstein, B‑u‑r \-- she sits in for Dan Brenner, but \--

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Her cable ‑- okay. That\'s a great suggestion. Jim?

MR. TOBIAS: What is the current status of the Commission\'s jurisdiction
on voiceover IP? It was part of the 255 further notice of inquiry, and
there has not been any action? Scott, can you \--

MR. MARSHALL: I don\'t believe so. But I\'ll certainly check.

MR. TOBIAS: Because that I think should be part of it.

MR. MARSHALL: Yeah.

MR. TOBIAS: I mean, if we ‑- you know. So can you take as an action
item \--

MR. MARSHALL: All right. Just wrote it down.

MR. TOBIAS: ‑- to get some sort of status report?

MR. MARSHALL: Right, okay.

MR. TOBIAS: Thanks.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. So we look about getting some experts in here all for
the next meeting. Okay. I think we\'re going to take a break. If you\'ll
be back here at quarter after, and then we have Martha Contee, who is
going to speak with us next. We\'re almost on time. Thank you all very
much. Thank you very much, Micaela. Thank you for leaving me speechless.

(Recess)

MS. ROOKER: Okay. I\'m going to get out the hook. I\'m really pleased
this afternoon that we\'re going to have a chance to discuss some of my
favorite subjects, ripoffs, or whatever we want to call them. And we\'re
very fortunate to have with us Martha Contee. She is the chief of the
Consumer Affairs and Outreach Division. This is a long time. The
Consumer and Government Affairs Bureau. How do you remember all that,
Martha? She doesn\'t. She counts on us to tell us who she really is.

But at any rate, please join me as we welcome Martha Contee.

(Applause)

MS. CONTEE: Thank you. Good afternoon. I am very pleased to be here this
afternoon with you, as Shirley had asked that we discuss a little bit
about telephone scams. She specifically asked for information about the
809 scam, but I\'m going to mention a couple of others to you that we
have come across, inasmuch as we\'re here this afternoon.

The 809 scam works something like this. The consumer gets an e-mail, a
voice mail, or a page telling them to call a phone number with an 809
area code, or some other three-digit area code, to receive a prize or
get information about a sick relative. The consumer makes the call,
assuming that they are making a domestic long distance call utilizing a
regular three-digit area code, which in this case was 809.

Rather than the consumer getting a local domestic call, rather they are
connected to a phone number outside the U.S. and is charged extensively
high rates for an international call. Further, the consumer doesn\'t
even know or find out about the high-rate international call until they
get their phone bill. Then that\'s when they start to process.

They will call the company on the phone bill and ask information, and if
they do not get it resolved, they call us, the FCC, and that\'s where
our informal complaint process kicks in. Our consumer and mediation
specialist, as you heard earlier today mentioned, are the people who
actually take the complaints or inquiries and actually work them and
process them. Our goal is to bring that complaint to resolution with the
consumer.

We encourage consumers in each month when they get their phone bill, you
should always examine your phone bill before you just pay your bill.
Look at every line item on that bill and question it as you would do an
item on your credit card or anything else that you have. If you cannot
get resolution from the company, you should come to us, and someone is
here readily to help you.

Another scam the Commission has come across is what we call the Mexico
collect call. And that is when an operator calls the consumer\'s
residential phone and tells the consumer that he has a collect call from
a family member who has an emergency or perhaps an important message.
The operator will have all the relevant information, the family\'s last
name, the husband\'s name, or the wife\'s name, and so you think it\'s a
legitimate call.

The consumer accepts the call, believing that it is truly a family
member in need. The consumer reports that they have been ‑- and then we
get the call. The consumer realizes once they get their phone bill that
they have been deceived by this, and get again a very high bill, and a
lot of case a fraudulent bill in this.

In these cases, we get a lot of inquiries, a lot of calls to us
directly, even before they go to the carrier because all the time they
don\'t on the line bill. They might not have all the pertinent
information. Or when they call the number, they get a voice mail. So
they call our consumer center and get assistance.

In any of the scams, what the Commission does is as soon as we are made
aware of it, we do what we call a consumer alert. We put the pertinent
information out there, put it on the web site. The CAMS utilize it. In
addition to that is that we ‑- when you call in the center or write in
the center about another telecom issues, we always make this information
available. So it\'s our way of getting the extra information out. Even
though you may be calling about a general bill on your phone bill, they
say, oh, by the way, are you aware of this, and would you take this
information and share it with your neighbors, your community, your
family, whomever you need to share it with to get the word out to them.

It\'s hard to do anything proactively on scams because you don\'t expect
them to happen, and you become aware of them when a consumer has been
victimized by it. So it\'s the first inquiry that we get that we act on
that. We simultaneously pull together the consumer alert and get that
information out, in the hopes that no other consumer will be ‑- or we
get the word out before other consumers become victimized with it.

One of the most recent ‑- except what Shirley has today. She mentioned
another one to me this morning. But another one that we have seen most
recent has been when a consumer places a collect call from a public
phone or a pay phone intending to use one of the services like the
1-800-CALL-ATT or 1-800-COLLECT. But suppose you misspell that, or
perhaps you misdial it, and you accidentally get another carrier,
someone maybe like 1-800-CALL-LAT. Honest mistake. We make them all the
time misdialing.

You get connected to the party that you want to call. However, the phone
company that connects you is not the one you thought you were using.
Instead it\'s a phone company that secures 800 numbers with similar
well-known ones. So it\'s easier to misdial that number. And the company
is probably banking on the possibility that we may accidentally make
those misdials. We are human. We do it all the time. And often these
companies will not even identify themselves. So again, by the time we
get our phone bill, it\'s two or three times greater than what we would
ordinarily pay for a call.

Again, what we stress, we stress, and we stress in the consumer and
government affairs bureau is that we should always refer to our phone
bill and ask questions. In other words, if you\'re making a call and you
believe it may be a questionable call or long distance, ask information.
That information is out there for you. It\'s available for you to ask
questions.

We believe ‑- what we do ‑- let me back up for a minute. What we do with
the data that we get, we take the data in the bureau and we look at the
data, and we\'re able to from the first call to look at it to see if
there may be some practice out there that is not fair and good
practices. So we utilize that data, and we\'re in constant dialogue with
other agencies, like the FTC, to share information.

Also, we have our enforcement bureau that we are in contact with them on
a daily basis because whatever we collect, and we always send it over to
them, there may be some enforcement actions or something else that would
take place. It is very important, and we do it, I think, in this
Commission very well, is that we share information so that we can
curtail these things and to put a stop to anything that may be lurking
before it really have the domino effect to it.

We believe that consumer education is the key, that there is no way that
we can ‑- it doesn\'t matter how many rules you have unless we have
consumer education, have a savvy consumer, someone who just questions to
know that we aren\'t going to win this game. So the best consumer
protection is education and awareness. And that is what our goal is in
this bureau. That is what my goal is in this division, is to work very
hard on that.

And, Shirley, I think I will go to Q&A now if it\'s okay with you. And
you can share the one that you shared with me today. As a matter of
fact, I have given that to the other part of our operation, and she is
working on a consumer alert as we speak. So we always -‑ when you have
information like this, share it with us. And our goal is to get it out
simultaneously.

MS. ROOKER: All right. I just learned what it\'s about. It\'s a very
interesting one. I just learned this this weekend from our Call for
Action director at Detroit. She told me about one that\'s in the Detroit
area because most of us think that when we\'re dialing a 900 number,
that you dial 1, and you dial 1-900 or 976 or some combination of
letters.

Well, in fact, what is happening in Detroit is you dial 313-976, and the
rest of the digits, and consumers who have been calling this and
responding to these ‑- using these numbers have been charged about \$27
for just placing one call. And there is no preamble telling you that
there is a charge going to be levied.

So it\'s the first time that we have heard of them hiding behind a local
area code, which makes consumers think they\'re just dialing a local
number. I don\'t know what the inducement is, but I know there are ads
in newspapers, and there are fliers advertising various and sundry
things. So I\'ve got more information coming to me. But I got this in an
e-mail from here last night. So I just wanted to share that with you.

I wanted to make a couple of more comments on the 809 area code, which
I\'m sure Martha is quite aware that the Caribbean now has been
expanded, I think, to what, 18 area codes, and we\'re getting complaints
from those other area codes. So while we used to be able to alert
consumers to the 809, now we have got to give them a whole list of area
codes to watch out for.

And that brings up the question of why they are able to call those as
domestic numbers rather than long distance, which we will address later.

And final comment you were talking about. You know, there are companies
out there that get names or numbers that are very close to, for example,
the 1-CALL-ATT or COLLECT-ATT. And what they are called is they are
called fat fingers dialing. They\'re depending on people making mistakes
and getting their company, and they charge you outrageous rates.

So anyway, thank you, Martha. You can just go ahead and call on these
folks, Martha.

MS. CONTEE: Ken.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. I guess a couple of comments. Oh, I\'m sorry.
That\'s a good point. I was talking \--. I guess a couple of things. One
is that I know that the 809 has been around, a scam, for probably 10
years, if not more. And we have been in dialogue with the long distance
companies for a long time on this, who probably just gave up, in terms
of whether or not it would be possible for them to do some type of
selected blocking as opposed to just blocking all international calls,
so that in much the same way that you\'re able to block 900 calls, you
would then be able to block that little sea of area codes for the
Caribbean.

So that\'s one point. The second point is that in terms ‑- the other
thing, I think, in terms of that is that in the past, when we have
talked to long distance companies, they have sort of disclaimed any
responsibility for saying that it was the consumer who has to be alert,
and there is no way they can do ‑- you know, reverse the charges. That
may have changed.

On the collect calls from Mexico, this is one that we stumbled upon
several years ago when we got a bunch of complaint calls to our Spanish
hotline in Los Angeles. What was interesting at that point -‑ this was
then ‑- you know, they were real collect calls, but still had very high
charges. We were told by the FCC that since it was a collect call from
Mexico, that the FCC did not have jurisdiction because it was an
international call.

So I guess part of this is just wondering from you whether or not the
FCC is now asserting jurisdiction over this type of call.

MS. CONTEE: Well, of course, we don\'t have jurisdiction over
international, when it begins in Mexico. But the Commission always takes
it ‑- we never back off an opportunity to try to facilitate all
complaints by the customer. Now we may have to work with other agencies.
If there is a jurisdictional problem, we\'ll certainly consult with our
international bureau to see what we can do to help facilitate that.

In a lot of these issues, which is why we do more ‑- try to do more
pro-consumer because some of those is that by the time we get to them,
the carrier is gone. The carrier, you know, has shut down, so we can\'t
really do a lot sometime to get a lot of the consumer\'s funds back. But
we are actively looking at that, and we have had some of those, and we
have actually worked to resolve some of those. And some of the customers
have gotten refunds on that. Thank you. Yes.

MR. ELLIS: I just want to alert you to a new scam that we\'re hearing
about more and more. This is Rich Ellis from Verizon, by the way.

MS. CONTEE: Thanks.

MR. ELLIS: It\'s a telecommunications related scam. There has been a lot
of talk lately about do not call lists. And now the latest scam is the
customer will receive a call, and the caller says, I\'m just confirming
that you\'re placed on the national do not call list. Could you please
give me your social security number or your credit card number to
confirm our database records. And people do it, and the next thing they
know, they find out that their credit card has been wiped out. So
that\'s a new one that is floating out around there.

MS. CONTEE: Thank you very much. Shirley.

MS. ROOKER: I guess I\'d like to ask the question ‑- I know that calls
to both Canada and the Caribbean are placed as those they are long
distance domestic calls because we use the ‑- we just dial one. I\'m
curious as to why the international operator is not required, because, I
mean, that is the reason these scams are so fertile is because consumers
don\'t realize they\'re calling internationally when they dial one of
these area codes.

Why is that set up the way it is? Does somebody have the answer?

MS. CONTEE: Oh, I\'m sorry.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Oh, I was going to answer it. But go ahead.

MS. CONTEE: Okay. Maybe your answer will be better than mine.

(Laughter)

MS. ROOKER: Ken will make it up if he doesn\'t know the answer.

MS. CONTEE: I believe the 809 is part of the national numbering plan,
and so ‑- right. It\'s accessible, yeah.

MS. ROOKER: It\'s an issue of what?

MR. ELLIS: It\'s part of the North American numbering plan.

MS. ROOKER: Well, why isn\'t Mexico included?

MR. ELLIS: Central America.

MS. ROOKER: Well, I know, but it\'s a neighbor. I mean, the Caribbean,
it seems to me they\'re farther south.

MR. ELLIS: They have to draw a line somewhere. They did it in Canada,
the United States, and the Caribbean was part of the North American
numbering plan, in 19 ‑- whenever it was, 30 years ago.

MS. ROOKER: Is there any possibility or thought of that being changed? I
mean, who makes that decision? Because, obviously, if we didn\'t have
the ability to dial one before these area codes, we wouldn\'t have the
scams.

MS. CONTEE: We can certainly ‑-

MS. ROOKER: Or at least they would be significantly reduced. Yeah. I see
I raised the telephone people\'s hands.

MR. ELLIS: But you had to dial one to make that call.

MS. ROOKER: You have to dial one.

MR. ELLIS: Yes.

MS. ROOKER: But you don\'t dial the international operator.

MS. CONTEE: The international code she\'s talking about.

MR. ELLIS: Well, yeah. It\'s not 011.

MS. ROOKER: No.

MR. ELLIS: But, I mean, that doesn\'t really solve the problem. It will
just move the problem someplace else.

MS. ROOKER: Well, it might, but these people are outside the
jurisdiction of the FCC. They don\'t have to give a preamble, whereas if
you\'re making a domestic call, it is required even though it\'s not
necessarily done. But if it isn\'t done, at least you can report it to
the FCC and get something done about it. But the FCC doesn\'t have
jurisdiction in the Caribbean. And yet, they\'re still being dialed as
though they were domestic calls.

MR. ELLIS: They\'re being dialed as if they\'re North American calls.

MS. ROOKER: No. But to the consumer, it\'s a seamless thing. They dial
it. It\'s a 1-809. They think it\'s a call in the United States.

MR. ELLIS: But you dial the same way to call to Canada.

MS. ROOKER: That\'s absolutely right.

MR. ELLIS: It\'s the North American numbering plan. And, you know, to
change the numbering plan to just get that one little nub of a fraud, it
raises a lot more issues than it solves.

MS. ROOKER: It probably does.

MR. ELLIS: Unfortunately. I mean, the answer is really consumer
education, that you don\'t dial numbers you don\'t know.

MR. KALTENBACH: Shirley?

MS. ROOKER: Well, yeah. I always tell them that. Right, Mike.

MR. KALTENBACH: Shirley?

MS. ROOKER: Yeah.

MR. KALTENBACH: Matt Kaltenbach.

MS. ROOKER: Oh, Matt. I\'m sorry.

MR. KALTENBACH: The question that comes up in m y mind is why we don\'t
have the ability of maintaining as an option our preferred carrier. I
mean, just because we have a software-defined network where you could be
billed anything doesn\'t mean I shouldn\'t have the option by pressing
one or by preselection to say I don\'t want to make any calls that
don\'t go by my carrier. Therefore, I can\'t be billed anything more
than 7 cents a minute, 8 cents a minute.

I mean, basically, that will block \$27 per call transactions from
occurring in software. Why can\'t that be enacted?

MS. CONTEE: Well, there are some blocks that are available through your
local phone company on some of the ‑- for instance, the one thing that
we recommend \--

MR. KALTENBACH: Do you have information on those on your web site?

MS. CONTEE: The phone company. It\'s your local phone company that has
that. As a matter of fact, one of the things that we recommended in some
of those is they put blocks on international calls. If you\'re not one
who makes international calls routinely, that you put a block on your
phone so that you couldn\'t dial some of these international numbers.

MR. KALTENBACH: I just want a block to my carrier. That way, if I\'m
making an international call, I\'m not limited. It just prevents other
carriers from grabbing a hold of the software network and billing me.

MS. CONTEE: Yeah. I\'m not sure that can be done, but you can check with
your local carrier and see what they can block on your local side. I\'m
sorry.

MR. McELDOWNEY: Yeah. Two things. One is if we\'ve got. I\'m sorry. No.
If you dial 809, you\'re using your regular long distance carrier. It\'s
just a regular call. It\'s only if you\'re at a pay phone that it
operates differently.

But you did bring up something that might be workable. I know that in
California, we worked with Pacific Bell early on with some of the
calling card scams and things like that. They set up a screening
mechanism in which any call that was more than X dollars a minute would
be kicked back. And so I think that that would be a way of addressing
the ‑- one way of addressing both the 809 stuff, but also the collect
calls from Mexico.

But I think ‑- my guess is that it has to be done by your local phone
company.

MS. CONTEE: Yes.

MR. KALTENBACH: I mean, we do the same thing for e-mail. We have spam
filters now, and we have to use key words to filter out any mail coming
into our box to keep unsolicited e-mail.

MS. CONTEE: Spam, yeah.

MR. KALTENBACH: So we could do something similar to that for the phone
system.

MR. McELDOWNEY: It would actually be easier because you could identify
the subsections within the 809 that you could flag, and it wouldn\'t ‑‑

MS. CONTEE: Okay. Mike.

MR. DelCASINO: This is Mike DelCasino. The whole 809 issue and the 900
issue, I\'ve got a little bit of background on some of those things.
They\'re really very difficult to identify the scammer. And it\'s
largely because if you look at the 809 area code, there is a lot of
calls made from the mainland to 809 numbers that are legitimate calls,
people calling their friends and relatives.

MR. KALTENBACH: Yeah. But at the time you make the connection, you\'re
signaling group seven identifies and set ups the fee structure. So if
you put a blocking filter on there, it just won\'t complete the call.

MR. DelCASINO: To?

MR. KALTENBACH: One of these scammers. They just disappear when ‑-

MR. DelCASINO: And in the past, AT&T has done that with some 809 numbers
and with some 900 numbers after, of course, getting the okay from the
Commission because you\'re not allowed to do that under the Commission
rules. But once we suspect that that kind of thing was going on ‑-
dial-up porn is the perfect example ‑- you do that. You put a block on
that.

Twenty-four hours later, that scammer is on another line.

MS. CONTEE: Right. He has got another number.

MR. DelCASINO: He has just moved his service, go picks another number.
He is on another line, and it starts all over again.

MR. KALTENBACH: But if you do it by signaling group seven, which is the
actual call structure in the SDN, then anything that\'s over so many
dollars a minute or cents a minute won\'t connect.

MR. DelCASINO: That\'s a possibility. Setting the limit on the price is
a possibility. I can imagine ‑-

MR. KALTENBACH: It would remove the incentive for these guys to pull
these scams.

MR. DelCASINO: Yeah. It would be interesting to know what that price
level would be.

MR. KALTENBACH: I mean, that\'s going to be a whole other discussion.

MS. CONTEE: Rachel.

MS. ROOKER: Let\'s see. I think the Sprint representative was next.

MS. CONTEE: Oh, I\'m sorry.

MR. SOWDERS: Okay. Is it on now? Okay. Just a couple of things. In
addition to the 809 area code, a new popular one is the 876 area code to
Jamaica, which is perilously close to 877, so people think they\'re
dealing a toll-free number, and they\'re getting that same sort of scam.

And then a quick note on the fat finger dialing issue because when that
issue came up this spring, the people who were perpetrating that scam
were actually Sprint customers. So without saying too much of it because
we are now party to litigation, we have in fact terminated or in the
process of terminating our contracts with those people.

So we think we have done our very best to root out that scam among
people who are Sprint customers.

MS. ROOKER: Oh, they\'ll probably go to Verizon or Bell Atlantic ‑- I
mean AT&T. They\'re going to get me.

MALE SPEAKER: They wouldn\'t dare.

MS. ROOKER: They wouldn\'t dare.

(Laughter)

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Travis. There were some other hands. Rebecca.

MS. LADEW: This is Rebecca Ladew. I have a question. How did this scam
affect the relay?

MS. CONTEE: I\'m not aware that we had one through the relay. Maybe we
did. I can\'t really answer that. Is Pam in the house? No. I\'m not
aware that we had any complaints through that.

MS. LADEW: But Gil is in the house.

MS. CONTEE: Gil? Thank you.

MS. LADEW: I thought I would get you away on this question.

MR. BECKER: I\'m Gil Becker, the previous director of \-- Relay with the
National Association of State Relay Administration. The relay calls will
be affected the same way. There is no way the operator would know that
it\'s a scam. So they\'re going to process the call the same way.
They\'re going to ask for your billing information, or it\'s going to be
billed directly to your home number.

So, you know, a scam can still go through. It\'s just functionally
equivalent.

(Laughter)

MR. BECKER: And it will be longer. It\'s true.

MS. LADEW: But then the person who called relay has a profile that
person ‑-

MR. BECKER: Rebecca, I think I know the ‑- yeah. Rebecca, are you
talking about if a person has a profile they can establish blocking
within their profile?

MS. LADEW: Yeah.

MR. BECKER: Yes. Many relay services do have customer profiles, and you
can set up phone numbers to either block numbers or frequently dialed
numbers. But you can set up a profile to block numbers. So you can say
don\'t allow any 809 calls to call from my home number. So we could do
that for relay. This is for relay.

MS. ROOKER: You know, that\'s an interesting point because do most
people who use relay services know that?

MR. BECKER: Well, it\'s an education issue.

MS. ROOKER: There you go.

MR. BECKER: It\'s an ongoing issue.

MS. ROOKER: That\'s part of what we have been talking about.

MR. BECKER: Right, right. And it\'s important.

MS. ROOKER: It\'s very important.

MR. BECKER: And no, the states don\'t do enough outreach.

MR. KALTENBACH: Do you have the same option for digital wireless
services to set up that profile?

MR. BECKER: If the relay can realize the ANEE (phonetic), yes, we can.

MS. ROOKER: Okay.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: Bob Chrostowski, TIA. Martha, what about from the
business equipment aspect? There used to be a proliferation of scams
using DISA, direct Internet system access, and going through business
system equipment, unbeknownst to the businesses and user. There have
been many notable cases of that. Has that tailed off, or have there been
activity in that regard?

MS. CONTEE: I\'m not aware of any recent activity in that regard,
although I need to speak with our consumer centers to see what they
have. But the last data that I looked at, it wasn\'t anything of
significance on that about that. So fortunately, maybe there is that
really has curtails. Yes, ma\'am.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: I just have one question that has to do with television
captioning. A case that I use as an example, one of the episodes of
\"West Wing,\" which is on NBC, that comes to me through KNBC, Adelphia
Cable, was shot in high definition, and then as a result ‑- and then
when I ‑- I had captions on my set, but then when I went to tape it, as
I had taped all of the previous ones, the high definition program
wouldn\'t tape. So I didn\'t have the captions.

And now when I see certain shows that are being shot in this new high
definition equipment, there are no captions. So if I am a consumer and I
want to call somebody, would I call Adelphia? Would I call KNBC? Would I
call \"West Wing\"? Who would I call? I mean, how do I find out why this
happened, what is happening?

MALE SPEAKER: How do I fix it?

MS. CONTEE: Yeah. How do you ‑- I believe what you would do is call the
program. But if you call ‑- I mean, I can get someone from here who is
well versed in caption, the caption rules, to answer your question to
that. And I believe \-- with the program ‑- the one that has the program
was that you called. But I will get back to you on that answer.

MS. ROOKER: Martha, could you let me or Scott know so that we could send
that information out to the rest of the committee?

MS. CONTEE: Absolutely, absolutely.

MS. ROOKER: Because I think that\'s ‑-

MS. CONTEE: Very important, yeah.

MS. ROOKER: ‑- a very interesting question, and certainly we\'re
probably going to be getting more of.

MS. CONTEE: Absolutely. Yes.

MR. GOLDBERG: I\'d just like to clarify. Everyone else in the country is
receiving \"West Wing\" captions. So your problem is a local one. We
caption that show, and have had no complaints like that whatsoever.

MS. LINKE-ELLIS: It\'s only when using high definition. It\'s not all
episodes

MR. GOLDBERG: The fact that it\'s shot in high definition is irrelevant
to this question. It\'s how it\'s broadcast, not how it\'s shot. But you
and I should talk about that. It shouldn\'t happen that way. There is
another issue going on.

MS. CONTEE: Thank you, Larry.

MS. CONTEE: Do we have any other questions? David.

MR. POEHLMAN: This is David Poehlman with the American Council of the
Blind. And I\'m not going to belabor this with specifics if I can avoid
it. But, Martha, if you guys handle DSL kinds of stuff, it\'s my
understanding that in certain areas, you have a choice among DSL
providers, one of your providers being the local telco, and another
being, you know, perhaps a dial-up provider that has decided to take on
cable and/or DSL services.

And if I have an issue where I decide to go with the local telco\'s
competitor, and a problem arises where I can\'t get DSL into the ‑- the
signal into the home, and the competitor refuses to ‑- well, the policy
of the competitor is basically kind of a hands off deal. And because the
policy of the competitor is a hands off deal, so is the policy of the
telco.

How do you go about resolving this kind of an issue? I\'ve talked to
both the telco and the competitor. The competitor says, well, the best
way to resolve this issue is just get DSL with a telco. And I don\'t
like that solution for a number of reasons, not that I\'m not, you know,
not that I don\'t like the telco. But I don\'t think that that\'s a very
equitable solution to that particular kind of problem.

MS. CONTEE: It may not be, but I really would need some additional
information.

MR. POEHLMAN: Okay.

MS. CONTEE: And you and I can take offline.

MR. POEHLMAN: Sure.

MS. CONTEE: Make suggestions to you. I have had situations like that in
the past in my old environment. And I worked into a suitable resolution
with the customer. So I will talk to you about that offline and get more
specifics about it.

MR. POEHLMAN: Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Do we have other questions for Martha? Okay. If not ‑-
well, Martha, thank you so much for being with us and telling us about
all of the new scams. I love it.

MS. CONTEE: Thank you.

(Applause)

MS. ROOKER: Yes, Susan. Susan Palmer has a question. Do you have a
question for Martha?

MS. PALMER: No. I actually have a state in that everybody should know
how great she was in the subcommittee for complaints and how helpful she
was, as well as Scott, in the whole process. And we could not have done
it without their help.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Martha. Thank you, Scott. Yes, very much.
Appreciate it.

We have on the agenda the discussion of telecom scams. We did that.
Other business, committee business. No we have been inviting agenda
items. And if you don\'t happen to have suggestions for agenda items
with you today ‑- put your hand down, Rich ‑- then you can always e-mail
them to us.

But anyway. All right, Rich, what do you want?

(Laughter)

MS. ROOKER: He is so mean to me sometimes. You have no idea.

MR. ELLIS: I just wanted to get our 90 second in to take some votes on
things from this morning.

MS. ROOKER: Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Yes. We have to
finish up.

MR. ELLIS: Oh, now you say thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Oh, yes. Thank you, Rich. Thank you, thank you.

(Laughter)

MS. ROOKER: I was afraid he was going to make some mean remark to me. We
do. We have to finish up. And Rich is going to do it in 90 seconds, and
I\'m timing him. But actually, you have as much ‑- you know, a little
time.

MR. ELLIS: I\'m going to take 90 ‑- I\'m going to pass some thing
around. Once they reach Ron and Robert at the other end, the clock will
start 90 seconds.

MS. ROOKER: Okay.

MR. ELLIS: I\'m going to pass the braille versions down to the right
first. I\'m going to pass a bunch to the right, a bunch to the left.

What these are ‑- we tried to boil down the things we talked about this
morning that we appeared to have agreement on so we could do a couple of
quick motions just to get things on the record. These are changes to our
charter. And again, anything that was controversial or that needed to be
talked about some other time, we kind of peeled away. So this is just
the things that we thought we had pretty much agreement on.

(Pause)

MS. ROOKER: Let\'s pass these down that way.

MR. ELLIS: All right. Ron has got his.

MS. ROOKER: David, if you\'ll pass the hard copies down. Oh, thank you.

(Pause)

MR. ELLIS: Nanci, look to your left. Okay. Everybody has their motions.
I\'m going to just take these one at a time, real quick. We\'re not
going to discuss them. We\'ve discussed them ad infinitum this morning.
We\'re just looking for the Roman gladiator school of voting. Thumbs up,
thumbs down.

The first, we move that the membership ‑- again, these are
recommendations to the FCC for changes to the charter.

First, we move that the membership of the C/DTAC be capped at 35
members, with membership divided roughly equally. Forgot the word
equally ‑- roughly equally between members of the disability, consumer,
and industry communities. Can I get a second on that one?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. ELLIS: All in favor?

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: Opposed?

(No response)

MR. ELLIS: All right. That one passes. Next, move that when the
vacancies arise, the Commission shall have the authority to replace the
departing member with an individual representing the same general
community of interests, for example, disability, consumer, or industry.
The departing member\'s organization is encouraged to nominate a
replacement, as are the C/DTAC members\' organizations, and members of
the public.

Can I have a second on that one?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. ELLIS: All in favor?

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: Opposed?

FEMALE SPEAKER: Can I interrupt really quickly and just ask you, Rich,
that \--

MR. ELLIS: It doesn\'t count against my 90 seconds.

FEMALE SPEAKER: No. That you pause for a little longer so the
interpreter has time to see if there is ‑- thank you.

(Laughter)

MR. ELLIS: All right.

MS. ROOKER: You don\'t have to do it in 90 seconds.

MR. ELLIS: If you insist.

MALE SPEAKER: You have got two minutes now.

MR. ELLIS: Two minutes, right. Third, move that all meetings are
encouraged ‑- I\'m sorry ‑- all members are encouraged to full
participate in every meeting in its entirety, either in person or by
teleconference.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. ELLIS: All in favor?

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: All opposed?

(No response)

MR. ELLIS: That one passes. All right. The next one is a two-part
motion. It is about the quorum. And we\'ll read them together and then
vote them together.

First, move that the standard for a quorum for the C/DTAC should be
changed to a simple majority rather than the current two-thirds level,
and then move by an affirmative vote of the majority of its members that
the committee may be resolution require a greater quorum requirement as
a precondition to the committee\'s taking final action on a specified
matter. A copy of such resolution -‑ can you tell the lawyer wrote this
‑- including a recorded vote thereon shall be included as an attachment
to the minutes of the meeting at which this resolution is agreed upon,
and the minutes of the meeting at which final action is taken on the
matter identified as a specified exemption to usual quorum requirements.

Does everybody understand that? So basically, if it\'s an important
issue, we all vote on that to make a higher quorum.

Can I get a second on that item?

MALE SPEAKER: Second.

MR. ELLIS: I have a second. All in favor?

(Chorus of ayes)

MR. ELLIS: All opposed?

(No response)

MR. ELLIS: I yield the rest of my time. Matt.

MR. KALTENBACH: A quick point of order on No. 3. It says all ‑- move the
members ‑- shouldn\'t it also include \"or designated alternates\"?

MS. ROOKER: Ah, good point.

MR. ELLIS: Anybody have any problem with that?

MS. ROOKER: No.

MR. ELLIS: All right.

MS. ROOKER: Yeah. Move that all members or designated alternatives.

MALE SPEAKER: If there are any left over hard copies of the sheet, we\'d
like to have a look here.

MS. ROOKER: If there are any left over hard copies of the braille, is
that what you\'re looking ‑-

MALE SPEAKER: No. Of the print.

MS. ROOKER: Of the print. We want print.

MR. ELLIS: They\'re in the back of the room over here.

MS. ROOKER: Send them back around, if you would, please.

MR. ELLIS: Who would like a hard copy? Raise your hand. Scott would.
Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Okay. Thank you, Rich. That was a very good committee
report. Very good. Excellent. Okay. Moving on, we are now ‑- I\'ve
already come up with some agenda items for the next meeting. And as I
have stated before, we\'d like for you to consider items, to let us
know. You have got to do it in a timely fashion because you know we have
time restrictions. Also, I want to find out if there is any other
committee business that we need to discuss today. No? Then if not, I
think we\'ll move into the public sector.

By the way, do we need to make a call for cabs? Is that ‑- do we need to
call for cabs? Okay. Let\'s see a show of hands of how many people need
to call a cab.

(Show of hands)

MS. ROOKER: All right. Let me see. Let me just count here first. One,
two, three, four, five. Rebecca didn\'t have up her hand, did she? No.
Okay. So there is five here, and Marilyn is six. Are there common
locations? Who is going to National Airport? What times? As soon as you
can? Do you all want to share a cab? Matt, do you want to share a cab?
Okay. So one cab for those two. Anybody else going to common locations?
Dulles or ‑- Joe?

MR. GORDON: Union Station.

MS. ROOKER: Union Station? No. Okay. So that\'s five. Did we say six? We
want five cabs then. Okay?

MALE SPEAKER: About quarter to 5:00?

MS. ROOKER: Yeah. About quarter to 5:00. Is that good for people? Okay.
Or maybe 4:30? Can we be out by 4:30? I think we can be out by 4:30,
yeah. Okay. All right. So we\'ll have cabs for you at 4:30, if that\'s
okay with everybody. All right. Then we\'ll move into the public sector.

I\'m very pleased that today we actually have three people who have
approached us about speaking out at our public part of this forum. And
we\'re delighted to welcome them. I think it\'s delightful. As a matter
of fact, the first person that contacted us was David Noble. He is with
the International Association of Audio Information Services. And, David,
where are you? We\'d like to come on up. We have a microphone up here if
that\'s convenient for you.

MR. NOBLE: And I\'ll pass this handout around the table.

MS. ROOKER: And we\'re passing out a handout. Let\'s start half of them
over towards David, and we\'ll put the other half this way.

(Pause)

MR. NOBLE: Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you for being with us.

MALE SPEAKER: There are copies coming around in an envelope.

MS. ROOKER: If you want to wait just a second, David, while people are
‑- we\'re distributing these.

MR. NOBLE: The copies that are coming around are actually a written
version of what I would say to you if I were to read the paper I\'m
holding in my hand. I tend to wander from my print in order to save
time, something that seems to be very valuable to the group today.

First of all, I represent, as a volunteer, the Association of Radio
Reading Services or Audio Information Services. My real job is to
provide support to one of those services in the Phoenix, Arizona, area
serving Arizona and all of its giant campfire.

What we have to bring to you today from the association, however, is to
us about as important as that giant wildfire in Arizona, there are
actually two issues. And we\'d like very much for this committee to
consider the implications of these two items.

The first and probably most perplexing to us is the use of a SAP channel
by our membership to provide reading services to populations in their
native cities who are blind or visionally impaired. They\'re reading
daily newspapers, popular magazines, grocery store adds, death notices,
current information that you can\'t get somewhere else. These are daily
items that go away in value in a very short time.

The use of the SAP channel has been sort of a second home for many of
those services. They moved from the traditional home of reading service,
which was radio broadcast on a subcarrier, or the SEA of an FM radio
station. Well, with the advent of the new descriptive video rules, we
have discovered that many of the member stations have suddenly been
preempted because of descriptive video services.

Our association is really in a quandary. We support wholeheartedly the
use of descriptive video services. It\'s a valuable service. However, we
can\'t stand idly by and watch while the valuable daily newspaper and
other current print information is no longer transmitted for specific
hours.

We intend to go to the FCC directly and ask them for a grandfather
clause that would be of limited duration until such time as the
transition to digital television is more complete and there is bandwidth
available for all of the services to be shared. However, this committee
probably is caught as unaware as we were. We didn\'t think of this when
the rulings were being made as being a significant conflict.

Descriptive video services will be growing, and it should grow. But
reading services can\'t be thrown away simply to introduce or expand
another service. So would this committee be willing ‑- and I\'m not
asking for a show of hands right now, but ‑- to consider how it can best
help us to respond to the Federal Communications Commission in
situations like this in the long term, where there are conflicts for the
use of bandwidth or other assets for telecommunication for people who
have disabilities.

That\'s the first of the two issues. The second is more longer term,
more durable, and we think actually has a great deal more potential for
the good of people with disabilities, and that is the transition that is
being considered for FM and AM broadcasting from its current analog to a
digital state.

There is a system being considered. It\'s generically known as digital
audio broadcasting. And in that system, there will be, as it is
described to us, digital signals inserted in the existing bandwidth of
your FM and AM radios so that as you listen in your cars or at home,
eventually, as the system matures, you would be able to have CD quality
sound in addition to the old analog sound, which means that consumers
don\'t have to all run out and buy new digital radios tomorrow. It\'s a
good transition idea.

The problem is for reading services that there is no ‑- well, it\'s
twofold. There is no plan in place that says for sure that the reading
services will enjoy the transition with the commercial and public radio
broadcasters. It\'s not a sure thing. The FCC has not ruled on this.
They are still in consideration. And that is why we have come to this
meeting today with this particular part of the issue.

We hope that you might feel it important enough to speak to that and ask
the Commission to consider the possibility -‑ and it is possible ‑- for
reading services on their subcarriers to be moved over to the digital
world with the rest of the commercial and public radio broadcasts. It
has everything to do with sharing the data bits that will be transmitted
with the old analog signals.

The reason for doing that is that there is no defined transition period.
No one really knows for sure how long they will continue to broadcast
both analog and digital. If the subcarriers that provide the reading
service for millions of Americans who are blind or visually impaired,
disabled in a way that prevents them from reading, if there is no
defined time for that, they remain analog. And they continue to have the
poor quality reception that exists on the subcarrier radio broadcast.

The last part of that has to do with what we consider a section 255
issue, and that is the new digital radios that consumers everywhere will
be buying. It is potentially an interactive device where the consumer
can talk back, in a manner of speaking, to the provider. There is no one
that we know of who has actually looked at these devices as a potential
255 item. And we thought with all of the discussion that we have heard
today and prior to this from this committee that it might be worth
bringing to your attention and asking you for your consideration.

To wrap up, the Association of Audio Information Services does span the
globe. But in the United States, there are 125 reading services, and all
of us are willing to help as much as we can in the mission and charter
for this committee. We have not been as strong a participant as we
probably could have been. We did apply for a seat back when it was
formed, and there was only so many to go around. But let me reiterate to
the committee that as its former president and a member of its board of
directors, we are ready to assist if we can in public service
announcements to the members\' stations to help provide information of
the results of your studies, to help you find consumers who want to
participate perhaps in focus groups, or any other fashion of
communicating to individuals who have disabilities. We have the
ready-made audience for you.

So thank you very much, Madame Chairman, for your time and for your
committee\'s. If there are questions, I can stay after the others have
their chance to talk, too.

MS. ROOKER: Well, actually, we can leave about three minutes. I\'ll
allow two minutes for each of our speakers. We have got three minutes,
if there is questions from the committee. Go ahead, Larry.

MR. GOLDBERG: I\'m Larry Goldberg from WGBH. Clearly, we have an
interest in the video description role, as does the entire blind
community. I wonder if you have actually contacted any of the proponents
of video description to discuss solutions to the radio reading service
problem prior to filing a petition with the FCC.

You probably realize that in Boston we are actually resolving this
problem through new digital technology already. So it would seem
counterproductive to delay the rollout of video description when there
are already solutions in place rather than asking FCC to delay a very
important decision.

MR. NOBLE: The Boston area and surrounding communities that are served
through the station there are very, very fortunate to have two
organizations that work so well together. That is not always the case in
every place where reading services are existing on SAP channels. If it
were that simple in every market, we would simply share that information
and say go on.

Now we have shared that through our own listserve. It\'s an e-mail group
for the reading services. And we are preparing that to go out in a
newsletter. But we don\'t feel that it would be in all of the members\'
best interest to rely solely on one example as the solution. We want to
propose an idea, kind of a run it up the flagpole and see who salutes.
It\'s just an idea.

MS. ROOKER: Matt.

MR. KALTENBACH: Have you considered the use of either low power FM or
the use of the digital Internet radios that go into a phone line and
give you the ability of tuning them just like they are a radio, but they
are actually radio broadcasts over the Internet?

MR. NOBLE: Yes, sir. In both cases, there are serious detrimental
effects to the listening audience, both in size and in number. The
geography of a reading service on the subcarrier or the SAP now is
25-mile radius from the existing subcarrier broadcast if they are on
subcarrier, further than that if they\'re on a SAP channel.

If you go to a low-power station, by definition they can only be a few
square miles or even a couple of blocks, depending on the licensing. And
finding a frequency available for a low-power station is a bit
difficult.

On the digital version of a radio that uses the Internet, there is a
problem with the economics for the listener. Most of the listeners to
reading services are elderly visually impaired. And the devices are
still a bit complicated. And to our knowledge, they\'re not widely
available. They are expensive, much more expensive than a subcarrier
radio.

MR. KALTENBACH: We might want to look at that as part of the universal
services scope.

MS. ROOKER: That\'s a thought. Okay, David. Go ahead.

MR. POEHLMAN: Johnny-come-lately here. This is Dave Poehlman with the
American Council of the Blind. I\'m wondering if you have given any
thought to at least a partial solution of delivering services by
telephone, you know, so that you could alleviate the SAP audio
description conflict somewhat.

MR. NOBLE: If you mean telephone by listeners calling in?

MR. POEHLMAN: Well, the listener would dial a number and listen to the
RS.

MR. NOBLE: Yes. There are some services that are developing those
systems. The Phoenix service, where I\'m from, has one. And there are
others that are available through the National Federal of the Blind.
Some of those are providing excellent newspaper service. And the reading
services on the subcarrier channels are investigating those as
additional ways to provide the service because of the time shifting
ability in a telephone system versus broadcast.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you so much.

MR. NOBLE: Thank you again.

MS. ROOKER: I appreciate your coming and taking the time to be with us.
We have joining us Marilyn Gelman, who is with the Brain Injury
Association of America, and she is from Alexandria, Virginia, I believe.
Am I right, Marilyn? The organization.

MS. GELMAN: The organization is based in Alexandria, Virginia, but they
trained me in from New Jersey.

Well, hello, everybody. I\'m Marilyn Gelman. I\'m here representing the
Brain Injury Association of America, and I would like to commend you for
your work in making telecommunications accessible and accommodating.
I\'m also representing millions and millions of people with cognitive
impairments that may be invisible as a result of traumatic brain injury,
and our cousins with cognitive impairments from all other causes.

We find that we are excluded from a level playing field with other
disability groups, often inadvertently. And I will give you an example
that had a very happy resolution. I have coined the terms \"cognitive
staircases\" and \"cognitive ramps.\" And these refer to artificial
barriers that we trip over and the many, many easy ways that we could be
accommodated.

I am accustomed to having a difficult time with voice menus, with the
utility companies, the phone companies, private industry. But when I and
many other people with many types of disabilities found that by the time
we got through to speak to a specialist at the Department of Justice
Americans with Disabilities Act information line, we couldn\'t do our
business. We were cognitively overloaded from discounting information we
didn\'t need, from hearing announcements we didn\'t need, from trying to
figure out multiple choice menus that were quite beyond us.

I wrote a letter to them. I explained that I understood the need for
voice menus, but that they perhaps didn\'t understand or weren\'t aware
that they were excluding people like me from making the same use of
their services because by the time we got to a specialist, we just
couldn\'t do our business.

I am very happy to report to you that they called me, and they had to
get through caller ID, call intercept, the 20-second long message on my
answering machine, and said they\'ve corrected the problem. They said
they could not get rid of the music on hold. Well, I don\'t know about
that. But they made it lower. They also said that they put in an
announcement that a dialer can just press seven to go directly to a
specialist.

I so didn\'t believe how easy it was to get that changed that I never
ever called them. I didn\'t want to see that it wasn\'t true. But at
different cost disability meetings I heard people saying, people with
multiple sclerosis, people who had had strokes, people with emotional
problems and mental retardation, and they all started talking about what
a delight it was to call the Department of Justice.

Nowhere would I have ever said to you that the Department of Justice
tried to discriminate against people with brain injuries and other
cognitive impairments by denying us effective communication and keeping
us off a level playing field. But that was the result. And I\'m not sure
they were not happy about it because they made a change so quickly.

What I am asking you is in the future that you keep me and my peers in
mind and work so that we have the same accessible, accommodating
experiences with telecommunications as do all the other disability
groups you\'re working for. We want a level playing field. And if you
ever need a personal viewpoint from somebody with brain injury,
vestibular dysfunctions, and central auditory processing disorders, ask
Scott to give you my e-mail address, and I\'ll be really happy to give
you my point of view.

Many times these barriers that stop us from functioning in society are
so artificial, can so easily be removed, but it\'s never thought of, and
it\'s just not realized, and it\'s not just done.

It was a pleasure meeting all of you. I feel like I\'ve known you
forever, and I wish you strength for your good work. Thank you.

(Applause)

MS. ROOKER: Marilyn, do you want to take some questions?

MS. GELMAN: Ask. Are there any?

MS. ROOKER: Do we have questions? Susan.

MS. PALMER: I assume you have talked to Jim Tobias about the IVR form.
Is that correct?

MS. GELMAN: I\'ve heard about the IVR form, and I found it very, very
interesting. And I would like to ‑- I don\'t know if I ever could attend
a meeting, but I would like to learn about it. I\'ve heard from Jim that
he has a friend who has collected 90 instances of IVR messages, and I
was going to try to get some of them when I presented at a state
assembly hearing for problems people with disabilities have in getting
medical care. And these menu systems are included.

But more than that, I am passing around Maryland\'s hot little telephone
list. And so far, there are hints on how to get through three or four
different voice menu systems. And I think I even broke the FCC\'s so I
don\'t have to go through menu structures. And I don\'t want to announce
it here because I don\'t want anyone to take it away. But I\'ll tell you
privately.

MS. PALMER: Okay. Please get in touch and talk to Jim about how you can
participate more fully in that forum.

MS. GELMAN: Thank you very much. I will. Any other questions? Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you, Marilyn. We appreciate your taking the time to
join us, and really to raise our awareness because when Marilyn met me,
she said, I may not look like I have a disability, but I do. It didn\'t
show, Marilyn. You made it. Thank you.

We have joining us Gary Bootay, who is with the Pennsylvania Society for
the Advancement of the Deaf. Gary, welcome.

MR. BOOTAY: For the Advancement of the Deaf. It\'s for the Advancement
of the Deaf.

My name is Gary Bootay, and I represent the Pennsylvania Association for
the Advancement of the Deaf on the Pennsylvania TRS advisory board. I\'m
one of the 12 members on the board, and I was told to come here ‑- this
is my first time here ‑‑ to get some answers, hopefully, to some
questions. And they told me don\'t come home without the answers.

However, I spoke with the chairperson. I spoke with Shirley earlier
before I was going to present and think of some of my concerns here. And
I don\'t think I\'m going to require answers from you today. But I would
like to forward them ‑- if you could forward them to Pam Gregory later,
she can get those to me.

However, after this meeting, if you do know some answers, if you could
grab me after the meeting, I\'d really appreciate it. Let me go on.

The first problem that we\'re having, that the TRS system is an ASL to
English default. Our board has said that we can\'t change ASL to English
because they\'ll say the FCC requires word for word from the operator,
from the CA. They have to follow word for word, and we disagree with
that.

I know Maryland and New Jersey often change the ASL type to English. And
so I\'d like to hear from the FCC to try and convince Pennsylvania that
they could change that policy because a lot of hearing people then
don\'t understand the sort of glossed ASL.

Our second issue, our phone carriers, AT&T generally, they refuse to
give us any kind of discount for TTY. They say that phone rates are so
low already that they can\'t afford to give us any kind of discount.
They won\'t give us any discount. It doesn\'t seem fair to me. Hearing
people can speak very quickly. A deaf person is having to type back and
forth and is limited to the speed of the TTY. And so a deaf person on
TTY tends to take about three times longer to communicate. It seems as
though there should be some sort of discount, and we may need the FCC\'s
help in negotiating that. How that happens, I\'m not sure.

Third issue. The complaint process, as you have heard from Claude Stout
talking about the complaint issues, I have some more information for
you. You should be aware that the number of complaints written by the
deaf are very, very low. It\'s really the tip of the iceberg. There are
a lot of complaint there, but a lot of the deaf people in the deaf
culture writing a letter about it is not a very culturally compatible
way to communicate the problems. We\'re a very visual community in
general and need to be signing these things and saying these things in
person, just to make you aware of that as sort of a cultural barrier.

Also, if you have a telephone complaint, your having to wait for a
supervisor, things like that, is a huge waste of time, and a lot of deaf
people don\'t ‑- they don\'t want to take that time. Also, a lot of
people don\'t have computers to access the web for the complaint process
there. Also, the web is not as user friendly. We\'re not able to find
the complaint forms. It\'s click here, click there, jumping back and
forth from page to page looking for the forms, and they\'re not as user
friendly as they could be, as well as a lot of the forms being very
complicated. Hopefully, they can be simplified in some way.

And the question is does the FCC have a complaint form, and if so,
where. I have been looking for it, and I couldn\'t find any kind of
complaint form on the web, on the FCC\'s web site. Can we complain to
the FCC through e-mail? I don\'t know. I know many of us in Pennsylvania
send complaints through to your e-mail addresses that we found on your
web site. We found that info at fcc.gov. And we\'ll send things, and
we\'ve never received replies. That has already been discussed as a
problem, I know, but just to reiterate that.

I\'d also like to know does the FCC have an e-mail for TRS complaints.
I\'m not aware of one, and I\'d like to be able to take that back home
with me, if I could.

Another communication problem. Many of you, I\'m sure, have read the
book ‑- you enjoy reading books, and you\'ll have like some 400-500 page
book, and suppose 50 pages of that book are ripped out. You\'d be very
upset by it. And the same thing happens with we as deaf people when
you\'re watching TV or a movie, and from like 9:00 to 11:00 or something
watching a movie. And once in a while, not always, but often, after
commercials, after a commercial break, the captions are gone, right in
the middle of a good story, right in the middle of a plot of the movie.
And you have to call the TV station. I\'ve called them. I\'ve called
them for the relay complaining about it. But the TVs ‑- again, I got
just a recording saying, you know, please call us during normal business
hours, et cetera, et cetera.

So there is really nowhere I can complain. What can be done about that?
Is there anything that the FCC can do to help address that issue?

Another communication problem. As a hearing person, you can go into a
store, buy a telephone. They\'re relatively a cheap, just a few bucks
really. You know, I\'ve seen \$6, \$7, \$8, \$9 telephones. A deaf
person can\'t buy a TTY for anything like \$6. It\'s at least 100 or so
dollars. And that becomes an equal access issue because it\'s just not
affordable in all situations.

I know that some are given away for free. But that\'s again based on an
income level. You have to be, like, sometime 200 percent below the
poverty level or something. For some people that are in somewhat
marginal positions, it\'s very unfair to ask them to spend these
exorbitant sums for TTY.

Also, you\'ve noticed many web sites that require phone numbers for
anything. They\'re always asking for a phone number, limiting it to like
10 or 11 digits or whatever in those fields. And there is no way to add
that it\'s a TTY, so it is a problem. I\'d like the FCC to make some
sort of ruling or recommendation to permit the words to be added onto
those fields.

I know that many times hearing people will call the TTY number and say
that it doesn\'t work because they\'re going to have to have a TTY or
have to go through the relay, and they\'re not going to understand that.
And it becomes a huge problem, and it\'s a growing problem. And
hopefully, you\'ll see the problem there and what I\'m getting at.

And another. All the states have phone payments for relay. There is a
charge there, a monthly charge, for the phone line. But where is the
phone? But the wireless and the cell phones, they can call then through
the relay, and there isn\'t a charge there for their relay. It doesn\'t
seem fair. The FCC should charge them equally to those ground based, the
land line phones. Is that a clear ‑- do you understand what I\'m saying?

Also, the last question, it\'s really more of a concern about outreach.
There seems to be no outreach going on in Pennsylvania. If you ask a
hearing person anywhere do you know anything about 711, what it means,
no one knows. Very, very few. So what outreach is going on? We need some
advertising. We need that information to get out to people all over the
country, Pennsylvania, Maryland, whatever. The hearing people need to
figure out this ‑- find out this information, that 711 is for relay. So
far, it seems as though no one really knows.

I think my time is probably up. I know it\'s a legion of questions that
I was hoping to get answers for to bring back home, but I know there is
not enough time to do that. But those are the issues. And if you can see
me later or get that information to me later, I\'d appreciate it. Thank
you.

MS. ROOKER: Gary, I would just like to say to you that I appreciate your
coming. And if you don\'t get a response from the FCC, you personally
let me know, all right? And I\'ll give you my card before you leave
because I\'m sure they\'ll respond to you. But we will look into the
info at FCC and find out what is going on and why there is no response
to consumers. Maybe it\'s the volume of mail, but maybe they need to
make some adjustments there if they are not getting a response to the
public. Thank you very much.

MR. BOOTAY: Okay. Thank you.

(Applause)

MS. ROOKER: I have a few more ‑- Bob, did you have a comment?

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: I just wanted to add another thought to ‑- I just
wanted to add another thought, if I could, if it\'s appropriate.

MS. ROOKER: Go ahead.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: I don\'t know if the other committee members have
experienced this, but I myself personally get many, many e-mails, and I
find increasingly ‑‑

MS. ROOKER: Can I interrupt just for a second to tell everybody that we
ordered the cabs for 4:45. Okay. Sorry.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: I\'m getting ‑- and I get many, many e-mails that
naturally I don\'t want. The number is growing. But what I find
disturbing is that the ones that I don\'t want, they always refer to a
site on the web as to cancel.

MS. ROOKER: They don\'t work?

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: That\'s correct.

MS. ROOKER: They don\'t work.

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: And I\'m wondering what the FCC is doing about this or
if anything is being done about this.

MS. ROOKER: I don\'t know that the FCC has ‑- do they? The FTC is the
one that does ‑-

MR. CHROSTOWSKI: The FTC?

MS. ROOKER: As a matter of fact, they invite people to send them their
spam. But I gave that number out on the air, and then I got some calls
from the consumers saying that it was not accepting their forwarding the
spam. So that just happened. I haven\'t had a chance to look into it,
but the FTC gets somewhere upwards of 15,000 spam e-mails a day that\'s
forwarded by consumers. And that was a while ago estimate. I\'m sure the
number has increased dramatically since then.

So I don\'t know. I just threaten to ‑- I send them back a threatening
note, get me off your list or I\'m going to send you to the FTC.
Probably. But I do it anyway.

MR. KALTENBACH: Shirley, I get spam faxes. Is there a spam fax number?

MS. ROOKER: Well, you know, it\'s against the law to fax you an ad.
You\'re actually ‑- I think you have the same protection you do on the
telephone, the Consumer Protection Act, don\'t you? Yeah.

MR. KALTENBACH: Even when I go and they give you a number to remove
yourself from the list?

MS. ROOKER: And they don\'t remove it.

MR. KALTENBACH: And they don\'t remove it.

MS. ROOKER: Well, you don\'t even have to give them notice. Actually,
just receiving one is against the law, I believe.

MR. KALTENBACH: Where do you go to \--

MS. ROOKER: It\'s the FTC that has jurisdiction over it.

I do want to bring up one item, and this is a request for exemption from
the Commission\'s closed captioning rules, which I think some of you may
be interested in. And this is an application from the American
Collectible Network, Inc. They filed a petition for exemption from
closed captioning requirements for its electronic retail program. I have
copies of the request for exemption, and there is a 20-day comment
period. So if anyone wants to make comments on this, if you like to shop
on TV, you may want to take exception to their request for an exemption.

But at any rate, I have some copies here, and if we need more, we can
get them for you.

FEMALE SPEAKER: Excuse me, Shirley. There are actually four programmers
there. There are four different ones.

MS. ROOKER: Oh, there is four. Okay. One of them is the American
Collectible Network. The other is the Extreme Productions, LLC. I don\'t
know what they are. They are extreme hunting adventures aired on the
outdoor channel. They don\'t want to have to do closed captioning. David
Whiteford (phonetic), producer of the program \"Sportsman Showcase\" has
filed for a petition for exemption. And the fourth one, Jeffrey Engle
and Cheryl Engle, producers of the program \"Engle\'s Outdoor
Experience\" have filed for an exemption.

David says that the Home Shopping Network hasn\'t filed, so he\'s okay.
But at any rate, if anybody wants these or is interested \--

FEMALE SPEAKER: They\'ll be over right on that table.

MS. ROOKER: We can get you electronic copies of this, David. Hang on a
minute. We have another public ‑- I\'m sorry. I\'m losing my voice.
Aren\'t you thankful?

MS. FREY: Hi. My name is Brenda Kelly Frey, and I\'m the new director of
the Maryland Relay Service. I just wanted to introduce myself. I\'m also
the chair of an organization called TEDPA, which is Telecommunications
Equipment Distribution Program Association, T‑E‑D‑P‑A. And as chair of
that committee, I would be interested in joining a working group, which
would be the working group of the subcommittee of affordable
telecommunications in the universal services arena, if you allow
outsiders to come in who are not members of C/DTAC, but representing the
35 states that have equipment distribution programs throughout the
United States. I would be interested, and being a Maryland resident and
close by, I would like to participate.

Okay. I\'ll give Scott and you a business card. Okay. Thank you.

MS. ROOKER: Thank you. And welcome, and congratulations. We\'re glad to
have you.

Do we have any other members from the public who\'d like to make
comment?

(No response)

MS. ROOKER: Do we have any other comments?

(No response)

MS. ROOKER: Do we have a move to adjourn?

MR. POEHLMAN: Yes.

MS. ROOKER: Yes. David is the first one to say. We have got several
hands here. Do you second that motion? Second that motion. All in favor?

(Chorus of ayes)

MS. ROOKER: All opposed?

(No response)

MS. ROOKER: Go home. Oh, next meeting date. Wait a minute. Pardon me?
The next meeting date is November the 8th.

MALE SPEAKER: And please leave your badges here so we can \--

MS. ROOKER: November the 8th. Leave your badges, everyone. Thank you all
so much. Have a wonderful summer. We\'ll be in touch.

(Whereupon, at 4:37 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

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**[REPORTER\'S CERTIFICATE]{.underline}**

**FCC DOCKET NO.**: N/A

**CASE TITLE**: Consumer Disability Telecommunications

**HEARING DATE**: June 28, 2002

**LOCATION**: Washington, D.C.

I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence are contained fully
and accurately on the tapes and notes reported by me at the hearing in
the above case before the Federal Communications Commission.

Date: [6/28/02]{.underline} [Tamica Northcutt]{.underline}

Official Reporter

Heritage Reporting Corporation

1220 L Street, N.W., Suite 600

Washington, D.C. 20005-4018

**[TRANSCRIBER\'S CERTIFICATE]{.underline}**

I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence were fully and
accurately transcribed from the tapes and notes provided by the above
named reporter in the above case before the Federal Communications
Commission.

Date: [6/28/02]{.underline} [Mary Ellen Feinberg]{.underline}

Official Transcriber

Heritage Reporting Corporation

**[PROOFREADER\'S CERTIFICATE]{.underline}**

I hereby certify that the transcript of the proceedings and evidence in
the above referenced case that was held before the Federal
Communications Commission was proofread on the date specified below.

Date: [6/28/02]{.underline} [Lorenzo Jones]{.underline}

Official Proofreader

Heritage Reporting Corporation