Achieving 100% Wireless Handset Model Hearing Aid Compatibility

<RULE> FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION <CFR>47 CFR Part 20</CFR> <DEPDOC>[WT Docket No. 23-388; FCC 24-112; FR ID 257122]</DEPDOC> <SUBJECT>Achieving 100% Wireless Handset Model Hearing Aid Compatibility</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Federal Communications Commission. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Final rule. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> In this document, the Federal Communications Commission (“Commission”) adopts a 100% hearing aid compatibility requirement that applies to all future wireless handset models offered for sale or use in the United States and implementation provisions related to this 100% requirement, including a Bluetooth coupling requirement. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> Effective December 13, 2024, except for amendatory instructions 3 and 4 which are delayed indefinitely. The Commission will publish a document in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> announcing the effective dates of these amendments. The incorporation by reference of certain publications listed in the rule is approved by the Director of the Federal Register as of June 3, 2021. </EFFDATE> <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Eli Johnson, <E T="03">Eli.Johnson@fcc.gov,</E> Wireless Telecommunications Bureau, Competition & Infrastructure Policy Division, (202) 418-1395. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> This is a summary of the Commission's Report and Order, in WT Docket No. 23-388; FCC 24-112, adopted October 17, 2024, and released on October 18, 2024. The full text of the document is available for download at <E T="03">https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-24-112A1.pdf.</E> Documents will be available electronically in ASCII, Microsoft Word, and/or Adobe Acrobat. Alternative formats are available for people with disabilities (Braille, large print, electronic files, audio format, etc.), and reasonable accommodations (accessible format documents, sign language interpreters, CART, etc.) may be requested by sending an email to <E T="03">fcc504@fcc.gov</E> or call the Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau at 202-418-0530. The complete text of this document is also available for inspection and copying during normal business hours in the FCC Reference Information Center, 45 L Street NE, Room 1.150, Washington, DC 20554, (202) 418-0270. <E T="03">Regulatory Flexibility Act.</E> The Regulatory Flexibility Act of 1980, as amended (RFA), requires that an agency prepare a regulatory flexibility analysis for notice-and-comment rulemakings, unless the agency certifies that “the rule will not, if promulgated, have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities.” Accordingly, the Commission prepared a Final Regulatory Flexibility Analysis (FRFA) concerning the possible impact of the rule changes contained in this final rule. <E T="03">Paperwork Reduction Act.</E> The requirements in revised § 20.19(b)(3)(iii), (f), (h), and (i)(4) and (5) constitute new or modified collections subject to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), Public Law 104-13. They will be submitted to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for review under section 3507(d) of the PRA. OMB, the general public, and other Federal agencies will be invited to comment on the new information collection requirements contained in this proceeding. This document will be submitted to OMB for review under section 3507(d) of the PRA. In addition, the Commission notes that, pursuant to the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act of 2002, it previously sought, but did not receive, specific comment on how the Commission might further reduce the information collection burden for small business concerns with fewer than 25 employees. The Commission describes impacts that might affect small businesses, which includes more businesses with fewer than 25 employees, in the FRFA. <E T="03">Congressional Review Act.</E> The Commission has determined, and the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, concurs, that this rule is “non-major” under the Congressional Review Act, 5 U.S.C. 804(2). The Commission will include a copy of the Report and Order in a report sent to Congress and the Government Accountability Office pursuant to the Congressional Review Act, <E T="03">see</E> 5 U.S.C. 801(a)(1)(A). <E T="03">Synopsis:</E> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Introduction</HD> In this final rule, we advance our goal of ensuring that all Americans can access communications services on an equal basis by fulfilling the Commission's longstanding commitment to establish a 100% hearing aid compatibility requirement that applies to all future wireless handset models offered for sale or use in the United States. By our actions in this final rule, 48 million Americans with hearing loss will be able to choose among the same handset models that are available to consumers without hearing loss. No longer will they be limited in their choice of technologies, features, and prices available in the handset model marketplace. Further, our rules will encourage handset manufacturers to move away from proprietary Bluetooth coupling standards and ensure more universal connectivity between handset models and hearing aids, including over-the-counter hearing aids. In order to ensure that older hearing aid compatible handset models, which tend to be lower priced, continue to be available for consumers to purchase, we provide for a phase-out period while these handset models are gradually replaced with new handset models that meet the latest certification standards. In addition, we strengthen wireless handset accessibility to encompass not only compatibility that benefits consumers who use hearing aids, but also a 100% volume control requirement for new handsets that benefits all consumers with hearing loss. Finally, we adopt revised labeling and website posting requirements that allow consumers to have access to the information that they need to make informed handset model purchasing decisions. The revisions that we adopt to our hearing aid compatibility rules are based in part on the collaborative efforts of members of the Hearing Aid Compatibility Task Force (HAC Task Force), who worked together over a period of years to reach a consensus on how the Commission could achieve its long held goal of a 100% hearing aid compatibility benchmark for all handset models offered for sale or use in the United States. The HAC Task Force, an independent organization composed of groups who represent the interests of people with hearing loss, wireless service providers, and wireless handset manufacturers, was formed for the purpose of reporting to the Commission on whether requiring 100% of all handset models to be certified as hearing aid-compatible is an achievable objective. The HAC Task Force's Final Report represents consensus recommendations for how the Commission can achieve this objective. We are committed to continuing to ensure that our wireless hearing aid compatibility provisions evolve to keep pace with technological advances in the ways handset models pair with hearing aids, and we will continue to monitor and update our hearing aid compatibility rules as circumstances warrant. The ANSI C63.19 standards, developed by IEEE, are referenced in the amendatory text (§ 20.19) of this document; they were previously approved for incorporation by reference in that section. <HD SOURCE="HD1">II. Summary</HD> Based on the HAC Task Force's recommendations and the record in this proceeding, we determine that requiring 100% of all handset models to be certified as hearing aid-compatible is consistent with section 710(e) of the Communications Act of 1934, amended. As part of this determination, we adopt the forward-looking definition of hearing aid compatibility that the HAC Task Force recommends, and we incorporate this definition into our rules. In order to keep pace with consumer pairing preferences, we adopt a coupling requirement based on Bluetooth technology standards that meet the requirements of our expanded definition of hearing aid compatibility and certain functional requirements. Further, as we proposed in the <E T="03">100% HAC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (100% HAC NPRM),</E> 89 FR 5152 (January 26, 2024), we require handset manufacturers to transition to our 100% hearing aid compatibility requirement within a 24-month transition period and nationwide service providers to do so within a 30-month transition period. We will allow non-nationwide service providers to transition to our 100% hearing aid compatibility requirement over a 42-month transition period. These robust transition periods will ensure that consumers with hearing loss promptly receive the benefits of our 100% hearing aid compatibility requirement. After the applicable 100% hearing aid compatibility transition period ends, all handset models offered for sale or use in the United States must be hearing aid-compatible. Any non-hearing aid compatible handset models cannot obtain a certification under 47 CFR part 2, subpart J, and handset manufacturers and service providers must remove all non-hearing aid-compatible handset models from their portfolios without exceptions. Further, after passage of the relevant transition period, handset manufacturers and service providers must ensure that each handset model in their portfolios has at least two ways to pair with hearing aids. Specifically, after the relevant transition period is completed, 100% of all handset models in a portfolio must meet acoustic coupling standards and 85% of these same handset models must also meet telecoil coupling standards. The remaining 15% of these handset models must meet our new Bluetooth coupling requirement, along with acoustic standards; these handsets may also contain telecoils, but they are not required ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 276k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━