Commission Releases August 5 Agenda to Adopt Hearing-Aid Compatibility FNPRM on Heels of House Adoption of Markey Accessibility Bill; and Wireless Backhaul NPRM/NOI

As anticipated from the Commission's earlier tentative agenda, the agenda for the August 5th open meeting, released on Thursday, confirms that the Commission intends to initiate two proceedings this month.  The first is a hearing-aid compatibility Report and Order and Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that will seek to require modern advanced telephone voice communications devices to be compatible with hearing-aids.  As discussed earlier, this proceeding is a precursor to the Commission's goal of making broadband services and applications, including Internet video, accessible to the disabled community.  This proceeding will also follow on the heels of the House of Representative's recent passage of Rep. Markey's "Twenty-first Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2009" (HB 3101), which we first talked about back in May, along with the companion bill S.3304 (Pryor).  On July 26, House Bill 3101 was easily adopted by a vote of 348 to 23, and the next day it was received in the Senate, where it is expected to pass.  As we discussed earlier, House Bill 3101, which is cited numerous times throughout the National Broadband Plan, would extend hearing aid compatibility requirements to "advanced services" (including non-interconnected VoIP and text messaging) and to manufacturers of devices for such services, as well as reinstate the FCC's "video description rules."The second agenda item is a wireless backhaul Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Notice of Inquiry that will seek to "remove regulatory barriers to the use of spectrum for wireless backhaul and other point-to-point and point-to-multipoint communications, in order to lower the cost of backhaul services and accelerate investment in broadband networks throughout the nation."