Smaller VRS Providers Prod FCC for Rate FNPRM in Q1, Draft Order in Q2

Service Holdings (GlobalVRS) and Convo Communications reviewed their Jan. 31 VRS rate proposal, said a joint filing posted Friday in docket 10-51 on a meeting with an aide to Chairman Ajit Pai. The FCC's 2013-2017 schedule of rate reductions was premised on planned "structural and competitive reforms," but many of those actions haven't been implemented "and the VRS market remains dominated by a single provider," said their Jan. 31 submission. "The current glide path has, in fact, benefited the dominant provider by forcing the non-dominant providers to reduce costs below optimum operating thresholds (i.e., near break-even or at an operating loss), while the dominant provider continues to compete from a position of comparative financial strength," they wrote. "The rate reduction that took effect on January 1, 2017, threatens the viability of all non-dominant providers, and will result in only further concentrating the VRS market." They proposed a four-tier rate structure to "move all providers toward a more reasonable operating margin" create "much needed rate stability" and save the telecom relay service fund $14 million over four years. Under the proposal, per-minute VRS compensation would be: $5.29 for an Emergent tier (500,000 monthly minutes and below), $4.82 for Tier 1 (up to 1 million minutes), $4.35 for Tier 2 (1,000,001 to 2.5 million minutes) and $2.83 for Tier 3 (above 2.5 million minutes). Sorenson Communications, the top VRS provider, didn't address the proposal but discussed various other topics in a filing on a meeting it and CaptionCall had with the same Pai aide.