FCC Cuts IP CTS Rates; Democrats Raise ASR Concerns
The FCC approved 5-0 Wednesday cutting IP captioned telephone service rates. Geoffrey Starks and Jessica Rosenworcel raised concerns at the commissioners' meeting, as expected (see 2009280044). They concurred on the order, questioning how well automated speech recognition (ASR) technology will work to generate captions. Commissioner Mike O’Rielly said the FCC should move to an auction but instead continues down a "tired and worn path” of ratcheting down rates.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
The agency lowered the current $1.58 per minute rate to a $1.30 cost-based rate in a two-step process, allowing $1.42 for the remainder of the current fund year and $1.30 for 2021-22 (see 2009090048). A further notice asks about “more precise measurements of the quality of telephone captioning.” The change is expected to save the telecom relay services fund about $200 million through June 30, 2022, said a news release.
The regulatory body conditionally approved use of ASR, but “the jury is still out on how accurate, and thus reliable, the service is or will be,” Starks said. “Commenters express concern about the use of ASR for important calls for which accuracy is paramount, such as those involving medical diagnoses or emergency assistance.” The same way facial recognition programs using artificial intelligence and machine learning “often exhibit deeply troubling biases for demographic groups defined by sex, age and race, studies have shown that speech recognition services make far more errors when transcribing the speech of people of color than of white people,” he said.
“The governing principle here is functional equivalency,” Rosenworcel said. “It is problematic that we are still working on service quality standards for new IP CTS services well after making them eligible for funding.” The FCC needs to fix problems quickly, she said: “This program is critical for those who are hard of hearing and rely on it.”
The FCC has been ratcheting down rates since 2018 “to align them with the actual costs of providing service,” said O’Rielly. “Rate regulation has failed to control costs or fix the program’s underlying problems, and it perpetuates burdensome and complex processes.” Look further at a reverse auction “as a means of approximating market conditions and maximizing efficiency,” he said.
The further notice focuses on caption delay and accuracy, Chairman Ajit Pai said. “We want to make sure that the service provides timely and accurate captions so that those who use it can easily carry on a conversation.”
“All the commissioners want to get the program on sound financial footing,” said auction supporter Roslyn Layton, visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. The FCC rightly “rejected pleas to abandon a single uniform rate, because tiered rates would discourage implementation of efficiencies by high-cost providers,” said Free State Foundation President Randolph May, who has written on IP CTS. Examine “further efficiency incentives like reverse auctions,” he advised.